“When I was a kid (4th or 5th grade), I loved drawing mazes.
I took a small notebook of them to school and a classmate offered to pay me a nickel for one.
He showed his friend, who also wanted one.
I got another nickel.
Word spread, orders flowed, and my pencil scribbled more mazes.
To expand the business, I teamed up with a girl who advertised and took orders at recess while I drew more.
We learned that we could charge a quarter if I drew them on larger paper.
We hired another student to draw more mazes at the same time as me so my backpack wouldn’t run out of stock.
During school lessons, I would peek inside my desk and admire the stack of nickels and quarters that was growing next to my erasers.
Then our teacher overheard us discussing our business strategy on the way back from recess one day and he shut us down.
Potential multi-million-dollar maze factory, dead.
He told us that school was not for selling things.
Then he handed us an order form for the yearly bologna, cheese, and popcorn fundraiser and told us to take our seats.
(True story, but with a slightly heightened ending.)”
