SELF
Being the Only Middle Class Kid Taught Me the Value of Incentives
How I came up with an entrepreneurial solution to a game I couldn’t afford.
Our pale yellow bus groaned to a stop and hissed as the door slid open, sending warm air out onto my freezing face. Our brown-haired driver was a cold and non-expressive woman who always wore sunglasses, would die midway through the year and be replaced by a new, colder driver who yelled at us incessantly.
I boarded the musty-smelling empty bus and we drilled deeper into the neighborhood, winding closer to the country club. It had a $30,000 join fee which was well above my family’s budget. Each subsequent bus stop brought increasingly luxurious homes. The kids donned fancier outfits and backpacks. Some wore designer jeans that cost hundreds of dollars. It was a far cry from my previous school bus, which was shared by children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Woody, Russel, and Ryan were the worst of the batch. They had zero respect for authority and cursed like sailors, despite being nine years old. They wandered their parent’s mansions unmonitored and it showed. Two of them had fathers who were my grandfather’s age, and mothers who looked barely out of high school.
It was the late 1990s. Console video games were at their peak and boys like us were totally enraptured by them. The first PlayStation had just been released and so, of course, all the rich kids’ parents insta-bought the system and every available game for their kids.
I was relegated to an envy-filled daily bus commute. These boys rubbed it in and were consummate bullies, “Hey, Sally. How is that Super Nintendo treating you? Still playing Power Puff Girls?” And it stung because they were right.
“No, I don’t even play that boring system anymore,” I said, totally lying. I was the only one still playing the aged-out system but it was all I had.
Put another way: Imagine being a horse girl, and watching every other little girl on your block getting a giant, majestic white horse for Christmas, with a flowing mane, beautiful eyes, and an ornate leather saddle — while you get a toy pony.
Alas, I tried begging and ran into a wall of no’s.
I came up with a solution
I had an idea when I was playing in my backyard. There was a tiny grassy plot extended 30 yards from the house that was heavily shaded by trees. A line of sunlight marked the beginning of the lush golf course.
It was the 3rd hole. The driving tee was off to the left. Quite often, I heard men screaming curse words right after they hit the ball. These golf balls often curved and landed in our backyard. Sometimes, you’d hear it hit several tree trunks in quick succession, with a loud thunking sound, almost like it was a pinball machine.
My mom would usually screech from the back porch, “Shhhhoooonnnnn. You need to stay away from those trees! A ball is going to hit you!” One day, I looked around and realized how many golf balls were around me. It was a minefield.
I went inside and grabbed a big bucket. Then, I began systematically gathering all the golf balls. In an hour, I had hundreds. I couldn’t believe how many were hidden in under our ground vines. Then, I walked to the nearby 3rd hole. I plopped down on a bench and put up a small, poorly written, “For Sale” sign.
The first set of men showed up at the tee. They were all middle-aged white men, with collared shirts. Immediately, one of them smiled, came over, and asked, “How much?”
At that point, I hadn’t even considered that I needed a price. I threw out some crazy-cheap number, ten balls for one dollar or the like. The man smiled and, said “You could charge more than that, kid.” He suggested 3 for $1. I agreed. Then he told me the price at the clubhouse was a lot more than that.
And so I was doing business — in a sport I still hate to this day
I didn’t do the best quality control; the balls were a total trail mix. A few dozen were in mint condition. Others looked like they’d been dropped in that blender from Will It Blend.
As a testament to my own innocence, I became somber when some of the golf balls went into their pocket, almost like they were my children and I was saying goodbye. I later made a second bucket that had mint condition balls that I sold 2 for $1. That was as sophisticated as my business model got.
I started stacking up dollar bills. I stuffed them into my desk drawer at home: clean, dirty, wet, ripped dollar bills, piled in tight, like chicken in a plastic bag. My clientele were almost entirely wealthy businessmen. I think they liked my entrepreneurial spirit. I’d wager half of them didn’t even need any golf balls.
Perhaps they saw helping me out as good karma to their own endeavors.
There was one guy who bought them and said, “You will go far in life with this mentality,” which was nice, but I just wanted my PlayStation. Surprisingly, I wasn’t counting my money or sales. I reasoned that I’d blast it out and sell as much as I could and avoid becoming more impatient by counting each day. When I finally checked, hopefully, I’d have enough.
Disruption of my business
I’ll never forget it. A golf cart pulled up in front of me on my bench in a screeching stop. A grey-haired man spun his legs out, and huffed and puffed over to me. He managed the golf course store. He didn’t bother with hello, just an angry, “I’m the only one who sells on this golf course!”
My golfball business was a wrap.
I went home and counted my cash and was thrilled to find out I had enough. My parents were proud and took me to the store the following weekend. I didn’t always enjoy sitting on that bench. It was hot. I got rained on and bitten by mosquitoes. Some of the golfers ignored me.
It was so immensely gratifying to walk out of that Toys R Us with a PlayStation and a bag full of games. There was no begging involved. It was the first time I’d earned money on my own. I’d set a goal. I’d worked to achieve it. And I got to truly own something.
This was my PlayStation. More importantly, I learned the value of incentives and hard work. I don’t consider myself some massively successful person, but I’ve done OK with the cards I’ve been dealt and I suspect projects like this helped instill motivation.
If anything, it’s taught me that earning your prize is one of the healthiest, most character building things you can do in life.