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Chapter Four: Saturday Morning Dilemma
This weekend is the weekend of The World’s Largest Fish Fry in Paris, Tennessee. Paris is about an hour drive from my hometown of Bradford, Tennessee. It takes an hour when my dad drives anyway. Autumn said that it only takes her dad about 45 minutes to get to Paris. She’s probably right. It usually takes us forever to get anywhere when Dad drives. He drives really slow. He said that it is because he drives carefully and observes the speed limit. Whatever. I just wish he could hurry up sometimes.
Dad is taking me to the Fish Fry tonight. This will be the first time I’ve ever been to the annual festival. I can’t wait to see what the world’s biggest fish looks like. That has to be a huge fish. I wonder what kind of frying pan they use to cook such a big fish.
Besides the wonder of the big fish, they are also are supposed to have several craft exhibits and a carnival with a roller coaster, funhouse, and the Cage of Fear. The Cage of Fear is a giant Ferris wheel with cages that let you spin your seat upside down while the giant wheel rotates. I can’t wait to try that ride. Everyone says it’s the best ride ever, although my friend Dakota Jackson once got sick after riding it at a carnival in Memphis.
Dad said that he is only interested in the Fish Fry itself and the craft exhibits. He reminded me that I went to a carnival last week in Trenton. He also reminded me that the $20 he gave me to spend at the carnival in Trenton was two weeks’ worth of allowances.
“Yeah, but they didn’t have the Cage of Fear,” I argued.
“They’re all the same,” he replied. “Carnivals are vacuums for parents’ money. You got to go to a carnival last week. If you want to go the carnival at the Fish Fry, you’ll have to earn the money yourself.”
Dad is always trying to teach me the responsibilities of money management. He claims that it will help me become a more fiscally responsible adult. I thought fiscally responsible means that you take care of your health and body. I’m in pretty good shape for a third grader. I’ve also been pretty lucky at earning money.
“Ok,” I replied. “Can Autumn go with us?”
“That’s fine with me, but she’ll have to have her own money for the carnival as well,” he answered.
That brings me to my current dilemma. Each ride at the carnival costs $1. A wristband will let you ride all of the rides as much as you want. A wristband cost $12. A funnel cake and coke will cost $6. I could use a few extra dollars to try and win some prizes. Dad said that we’re going to leave about 5:00 this afternoon. It’s 8:30 in the morning now. I have 8 ½ hours to earn $20. This is going to be a challenge.
My dad says that I’m pretty creative when it comes to moneymaking ventures. He says that I might want to become an entrepreneur instead of a chef, scientist, and veterinarian. Recently, we had an abundance of cucumbers from our garden. Have you ever noticed that adults plant way too much stuff in their garden? It’s just me and my dad that live in our house, but he plants four rows of cucumbers and tomatoes every year. I don’t even like tomatoes. We usually end up giving them away to friends and neighbors.
One summer, we had so many tomatoes that they began to rot. We gave away what we could. Autumn and I decided to use the rest as ammunition in a tomato fight against some neighborhood boys. Autumn and I easily won that battle because of our massive stockpile of blackened tomatoes. Poor Tommy Allen could have made tomato soup by wringing his clothes out. He was drenched in rotten tomato juice. Autumn and I proudly proclaimed ourselves the Tomato Queens of Bradford. Our celebration was interrupted by the familiar sound of “Serina Kay!” It seems Mrs. Allen didn’t find anything glorious about our victory. She promptly called my dad to inform him of what we did to poor Tommy. He scolded me for a moment, but he did manage a chuckle when we told him what happened.
With most of the tomatoes gone, we still had hundreds of good cucumbers.
“What are you going to do with these?” Autumn asked.
"I guess we’ll just give them away. It’s not like we can have a cucumber fight. They’d probably sting pretty bad. They’re much harder than the spongy tomatoes we blasted Tommy and his friends with,” I replied.
“Why give them away? Let’s see if we can sell them,” she proposed.
We loaded up my wagon until cucumbers were overflowing over the top and made our way to every house in the neighborhood. We weren’t sure what the price of a cucumber was at the supermarket, so we priced ours at 10 cents each. Most of the neighbors that were home bought at least one cucumber.
We had sold almost all of the cucumbers when we reached Mrs. Barnes’s house. Mrs. Barnes’s house is the nicest house on the block. She has an enormous in-ground pool with two diving boards and a slide. The funny thing is, I’ve never seen any kids over there. My dad says that she is a widow, whatever that means.
“Would you like to buy some cucumbers?” I asked nervously.
“How cute,” she replied.
“How much are you selling them for?”
“Ten cents apiece,” I answered.
“Your dad usually gives them to me for free,” she responded.
I explained to her that we were trying to raise money for the carnival. I was expecting a lecture about saving my money for something better than a carnival. I had heard the speech several times that day as we stopped at each house and were asked why we were selling cucumbers. Hopefully, she would understand the importance of going to the carnival.
“How much for all of them?” Mrs. Barnes asked.
We still had twelve cucumbers left.
“I’ll let you have them all for $1.00,” I replied.
“Well, I guess that is a bargain,” said Mrs. Barnes.
We sold her the rest of the cucumbers. We didn’t have a bag to put them in, so Autumn stretched out her shirt and carried the cucumbers into her kitchen.
On the way home, Autumn kept talking about how nice Mrs. Barnes’s house was on the inside. I wasn’t paying attention. I was too busy counting the money. Autumn and I each made $4 that day. That wasn’t bad, but I would have to sell four times as many cucumbers to earn the remaining $16. Although we still had a ton of cucumbers ready to pick from the garden, we didn't have near enough to earn the rest of the money that I needed for the carnival. I needed something that was guaranteed to make at least $16 by 5:00.
I decided to call Autumn. Autumn’s parents were giving her the money for the carnival since she would be riding with us. Her dad said that it was worth $20 for someone else to fight the large crowds that accompany the Fish Fry.
“I don’t understand what parents have against carnivals,” Autumn exclaimed.
“I don’t either. I might not even get to ride the Cage of Fear or anything else. I'll probably be stuck with Dad all night. He'll make me go with him to all of the boring exhibits if I can’t come up with the rest of the $20 by 5:00,” I said hopelessly.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got a plan to make lots of money fast,” Autumn declared.