Flashback Friday: The Block Is Hot

It's one of those what came first, the chicken or the egg kind of deals. I don't know if people back in the 80s and 90s saw how well the youth adapted to selling drugs and decided to exploit it or if they were trying to teach us salesmanship and inadvertently created drug dealers. Either way, why is it that every adult tried to use us to peddle things back in the day? I'm speaking of fundraisers.

Girl Scouts are the only, I repeat, ONLY group of children that people are happy to buy things from. Everyone else can go to hell as far as adults are concerned, nonetheless parents, teachers, churches and athletic groups sent us out on candy and wrapping paper runs like drug mules.

[caption id="attachment_1814" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Would you like to buy some for my school?"][/caption]

It's sad when your own relatives won't buy your wrapping paper. Everyone in my family got theirs from the Dollar Store. My neighbors would sometimes buy it, but never enough for me to get the cool prizes like a mini TV which required you to sell $17,000 worth. I ended up with the crappy prizes:

[caption id="attachment_1815" align="alignnone" width="116" caption="It's either this or some bedazzled pencils"][/caption]

No one likes this crap either:

[caption id="attachment_1812" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Fine! How much are they? TWO DOLLARS!?"][/caption]

I remember being given these little bricks to push around the neighborhood. Some kids just walked around with a milk crate full of tasteless, Dollar Store looking, stale Valentine's Day candy. My group tried to be "upscale" and sell these overpriced wannabe Snickers. Then adults would say, "Why don't y'all just sell real candy?"

So someone got a bright idea:

[caption id="attachment_1813" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Pure and uncut"][/caption]

These sold way easier, but now there was a problem: Everybody was selling these. You'd be on the subway and two little kids would get on with their junior high school basketball jerseys. At first you'd think they were about to rob the train. "EXCUSE ME EVERYBODY! We go to Martin Luther King Malcom X JJ Walker Let the Good Times Roll Public Charter School and we're trying to get new jerseys." Why is it that the first thing every black team needs is jerseys and a ride to nationals? How did you pay your coach?

In the end, you just went with the default and had your mother sell it at work. Not sure why they even involved the kids in the first place.

PS...Did anyone else have their mother almost crash the car to buy these from kids selling them at the intersection?

[caption id="attachment_1817" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="Crack."][/caption]