Nothing New Under the Sun
March 13th, 2009
New suckers are born every day.
Today, Josh Bearman has gone straight. He’s a successful writer in Los Angeles. But he was briefly a criminal mastermind — in 1980 — when he transferred to a new school in Minneapolis and joined the third grade.
It was a fancy school where all the kids had fancy snacks like chewy granola bars and Rice Krispies treats.
Bearman himself grew up in a spartan home with no sugar.
To make matters worse, kids wouldn’t just eat their lunches — they’d flaunt them. Every day, a brisk trade in lunch snacks would take place. Kids would pile all their best items onto one main table and start bartering.
“People would say, ‘Oh, well listen, I’ve just had my fill of Rice Krispies treats for two weeks in a row, straight. Why don’t I have some of your Fruit Roll-Ups?’ And so they would trade it all around,” Bearman recalls. “And it actually is a pretty efficient system. Everyone got what they wanted. It kind of all worked out for them. It didn’t work out for me at all because I was totally outside of this economy. Because my peanut butter and jelly sandwich had no currency value in this market whatsoever.”
Cake Futures
And so, Bearman came up with a plan. A scheme. A lie. He told his classmates that every year, on the last day of class, his mother would bake a cake. A huge cake. The most delicious cake you’ve ever tasted.
“So what I said was, ‘Listen, that’s going to be a great day. But in the meantime, I can offer you this special opportunity. And what we can do is, if you give me those Cheetos now, today, you can lay a claim — you know, on a share of this future cake. You can have a deposit, and have a piece of this cake when it comes.’ So, basically, I developed this sort of derivative lunchroom market for delicious cake futures.”
So, I’m thinking this guy should just change into an orange, paper jumper and call himself “Bernie”, or something.
Yeah, exactly. I would have whooped his butt if he did not bring me cake though.