The Septimus Notes

Monday, June 27, 2005

|Summer and Capitolism Go Together Like H and 2O.|

One summer evening, years ago when I was five or six, my brothers and cousins and I were all at my aunt's house in one of the many inconsequential black suburbs of D.C. on the Maryland-side of the beltway. That night, it was hot, the kind of humidity that water-bordered cities are known for during the summer months and there was a blackout. In a neighborhood where A/C is as mythical, even in houses, as the legendary El Dorado, the only option on a black out summer evening for a houseful of black people without any ability to modify the interior atmospheric conditions is to retreat to the front porch or the back patio and tell stories.

(Black people, like black color, tend to absorb and retain heat -- there's a reason why any Southern Baptist Church service is a disaster without hand-held fans -- especially when they are having a good time.)

The kids in the neighborhood that night, as kids often do when disaster strikes, congregrated together at the first sniff of an entrepreneurial opportunity. My memory fails me so many years after the fact, but someone had the brilliant idea that we could capture the lightning bugs which seemed to be buzzing around in droves that evening in jars and then sell them at clearance sale prices (since there was no original output cost, nothing would be lost by not gouging our customers) and turn a hefty profit.

The plan was genius. And fail proof. Those who were assigned to gather the bugs into jars found quite a few of the insects and wrangled them into the jars with amazing success. Those who were given the task of setting up the selling stand and advertising were not as successful in their endeavors. It suffices to say that not a single lightning bug was sold that evening.

At the time, I thought, "Oh well." But now I think, why didn't the adults in the neighborhood, all of whom were sitting outside doing nothing at all, indulge us in giving us a few cents for our lightning bugs? I mean, we were imaginative and can-do kids -- why not endorse that?

I am willing to bet a king's ransome that that is precisely where my low self-esteem syndrome began... with a few lightning bugs and a dream deferred.

promulgated by SWS2.1 at 18:22.
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