I’ve always had a knack for finding ways to make money.
My first business venture horrified my mother.
I was around ten years old when my primary school started running a canteen, or as we called it in Australia, a tuck shop. It wasn’t anything fancy. A couple of mothers sold homemade cakes, slices and all the wonderful lollies that seemed to exist only in childhood — toffee, marshmallows, French jellies, chocolate crackles, fudge and stickjaws.
I wanted them all.
The problem was that Mum never gave me any money for tuck shop purchases.
Not because she was mean.
Mum explained that we simply couldn’t afford it.
So, armed with an enormous sweet tooth and an enterprising spirit, I came up with my own business plan.
Looking back, it probably wasn’t one they’d teach in business school.
I owned a set of cotton underpants that my aunt had given me for Christmas. Across the front of each pair was printed a different day of the week. Monday was Wash Day. Tuesday was Shopping Day. Wednesday… I’ve long forgotten. Each pair had its own little saying and matching illustration.
Every Friday at morning tea, five boys from a couple of grades above me would gather near the high jump pit.
Each boy paid me one penny.
I had five folded pieces of paper in my little hand, one for each day of the week. Each boy picked a piece of paper with a day printed on it.
Then I lifted my skirt hem to reveal my panties and the day of the week printed on the front.
The boy who’d picked the correct day won his penny back.
The other four didn’t.
That was my profit.
In my ten-year-old mind, this was perfectly innocent. No flashing. No giggling. Just a very earnest little businesswoman running what she considered to be a perfectly legitimate lottery.
Four pennies bought quite a lot of lollies in those days. Sometimes one penny would buy two mouth-watering sweets.
One Friday, the tuck shop lady even slipped me two extra toffees that hadn’t sold because they were closing up. I’d become such a loyal customer!
I couldn’t possibly eat them all, so I tucked the extra toffees into my school bag to enjoy over the weekend.
That, as it turned out, was the downfall of my flourishing enterprise.
This particular Saturday morning, Mum was cleaning out my school bag.
There, sitting quietly at the bottom, were my two forgotten toffees.
She called me into the kitchen.
“I’ve never given you money for tuck shop,” she said. “So where did these come from?”
Then came the questions every innocent child dreads.
“Did you take money from my purse?”
“No.”
“Did you steal them from the tuck shop?”
“No!”
So I explained my little business enterprise.
Mum listened.
Her expression softened… then slowly turned to disbelief.
And then came the words I’ll never forget.
“You are a decent girl.”
I nodded.
“Decent girls do not show boys their underpants!”
She was absolutely horrified.
I, on the other hand, couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about.
I’d simply found a way to finance my tuck shop habit.
Curiously, from that Friday on, Mum always managed to find a perfectly respectable way for me to earn tuck shop money.
She introduced a star chart. Every little job I completed over the weekend earned a star, and every Friday morning those stars were converted into a few pennies she’d somehow managed to find in her weekly budget.
Looking back, I suspect Mum decided it was a far more decent way to encourage my entrepreneurial spirit.
She wasn’t trying to stop me making money.
She just preferred I kept my underpants out of the business plan.