Actually, Most People Really Like Kids

One day I was walking through O’Hare airport, killing time before a flight, and something felt off. People were being really, oddly, inexplicably nice to me.

Women in line at the public bathroom gestured for me to go ahead of them. Elderly strangers nodded, wished me a nice day, and stepped aside to let me pass. People smiled at me as if I were a celebrity they recognized from their favorite TV show. What was going on? Why were these randos being so nice?

Well, it turns out I had forgotten that I was wearing my six-month-old baby. Plastered on his face was a perma-grin showing off his new bottom teeth. He was in that smiley, interactive phase that many babies go through—intent on making eye contact with everyone who crossed his path and NOT GIVING UP until they smiled back at him. And as it turned out, most people were happy to oblige. They thought he was kind of cute. Per my friend Darby Saxbe, that’s a thing with babies!

I’ve used my Substack to catalogue some of my many frustrations as a parent, mostly complaining that:

My kids never slept much

My kids don’t care about looking nice

My kids are hard to keep alive

People have occasionally been mean to us in public

But in keeping with my moderate branding and desire to present balanced takes, I now want to share another side of the story: Actually, people really like kids. And not just babies. I have proof.

How do I know? Because for six years in a row, my boys milked over $3,000 in Cub Scout popcorn sales out of our community. And trust me, our neighbors weren’t buying this popcorn because it was a really good deal, or because it’s tasty (I would highly recommend avoiding the Peanut Butter Cup flavor—it looks good, but is so sickeningly sweet that it makes you want to vomit!)

Before you make any assumptions, let me assure you—I am not that mom. I take no joy in planning, organizing, or executing fundraisers. I actually hate them with the fire of a thousand suns. When my kids come home from school with a handout about a fundraiser in their backpack, it usually goes immediately in the trash. I purposely skip meetings where I think I may be asked to volunteer for the fall festival or the spring dance fundraiser. I’d rather just write a check to the PTO, the soccer club or the robotics team for the bare minimum needed assuage my parental guilt, and then use my spare time to do…basically anything else. Yard work. Laundry. Taxes.

And no, I did not just force overpriced popcorn on unsuspecting coworkers and friends. I am not that popular and don’t have $3,000 dollars worth of friends! I swear to you, my sons were literally the driving force behind these popcorn profits.

Here’s the story of how it all began. I reluctantly became involved in Cub Scouts of America when my oldest son (pictured below) was in second grade. At the time, I didn’t know much about the organization, other than hearing wind of the sexual abuse scandal and noticing how they showed up with flags at every sporting event, seeming really patriotic. But my son was adamant that he wanted to participate. A couple of his friends were doing it, and the activities seemed so fun. Camping! Biking! Building cars! Shooting arrows! I could not dissuade him even though it didn’t really feel like my jam (guess it wasn’t really about me anyway lol).

Right away, he became determined to help his troop by selling popcorn for the annual fundraiser. As per usual, I told him I would buy 200 dollars of popcorn to shut him up and meet the bare minimum requirement of the fundraiser, but he did not seem happy with that. He got it in his head that he was going to join the “Winner’s Circle”—aka, the top tier Cub Scout sellers who manage to sell at least $3,000 of popcorn.

Seven-years-old at the time, he excitedly told me about all the amazing prices he might win. A telescope! A tablet! A TV! I knew the prizes were low-quality junk, and I told him that. But he was obsessed and wouldn’t let it go.

So I did what any reasonable mom would do. I told him he was about as likely to sell $3,000 of popcorn as he was to play basketball for the Bucks NBA franchise, his other big dream at the time. Basically, I did my best to crush his spirit with the end goal of saving myself a lot of time, misery and awkward conversations with neighbors and co-workers who would undoubtedly feel pressured to buy from him.

But no matter how hard I tried, my son was insistent, so eventually I told him I’d pick up $1,000 of popcorn for him to sell in the neighborhood, and we could go and get more if he actually sold it. I assumed we’d be returning the unsold popcorn in shame to the Pack’s “Popcorn Colonel” (haha, get it?) a few weeks later, but instead my son surprised me. He went to work, filling up our old jogging stroller with popcorn, and pushing the cart around the neighborhood with me following sheepishly behind.

As luck would have it, in the fall of 2020, the peak of the Covid pandemic, almost everyone was home. When we’d ring the doorbell, clad in masks, it was like we were angels sent from heaven—literally the best thing they’d seen all day.

Socially isolated people, starved for any human interaction but especially charmed by my cute little boy in his Cub Scout uniform, opened the door and were delighted to see us. Some of these people we knew, as they were neighbors we saw walking their dogs around, but many were unknown to us. My husband and I are shy people, so we’re not exactly planning the neighborhood block party. Mostly, these neighbors didn’t know us and didn’t owe us anything.

Completely expecting to have the door slammed in our faces, I was shocked at just how nice people were. The good people of our neighborhood bought this overpriced popcorn in droves! My son did his sales pitch, often convincing them to buy the most expensive items, like the $60 chocolate lover’s tin. If he saw they had up a Packers flag, he’d try to sell them the caramel sea salt Packers tin for $25 (it’s $28 now—inflation!) If someone “didn’t like popcorn” he’d remind them that “we also sell trail mix, chocolate pretzels, coffee, and accept donations.” That kid rarely left a house without a fat wad of cash. Sometimes, it felt like we’d never leave a house at all.

Neighbors reminisced with my son about their own time in Scouts. They let him pet their dogs. They laughed about the fact that he wasn’t wearing shoes (don’t tell Cub Scouts—I’m pretty sure shoes are supposed to be part of the uniform). On occasion, an old man would insist that he recite the Scout Law and the Scout Oath before purchasing. My son obliged to the best of his ability.

I was in awe of my son’s sales acumen. It was starting to make me think he’d been switched at birth. Who was this smooth-talking, eye-contact making person? We easily sold $1,000 of popcorn, so we went back for $1,000 more. After that, we went back for $1,000 more. And pretty soon my son was in the “winner’s circle.” I convinced him to pick the $200 Amazon gift card as his prize, and he was in heaven, that being the largest sum of money he’d ever had control of in his life.

After that first year, with his initial success, the boy knew what to do to milk the neighborhood. He also took his products to cross country meets, grocery stores, and tailgates at the Brewers stadium parking lot. That is, until they kicked us out—turns out the Brewers want to sell their own overpriced food and don’t tolerate outside groups coming in to make money off their customers!

A few years later, my younger son, who is more like me—quiet and shy—also had the goal of following in his brother’s footsteps and selling $3000 of popcorn, but times were different. The Covid pandemic was behind us and people weren’t as flush with cash, having no where else to spend it. Also, we found that a lot of people had installed Nest cameras, so they could more easily avoid talking to us when we’d ring the doorbell. Had neighborliness left us? We were worried.

So this time, we had to take a different approach: we camped out at the local Pick n’ Save supermarket for several hours every Sunday, preferably right before or after the Packers game, when we could expect an influx of customers. Unlike the Brewers, this grocery store chain was very accommodating of our little popcorn shop. We’d set up our table, sit back, and wait for the kindness of strangers to fund our Cub Scout Pack.

Sometimes it was hard. Sometimes it was borning. Ten, fifteen minutes would pass without a hit, but then we’d get an influx of customers. Maybe they felt sorry for us, sitting all alone, my son making this sad face (pictured above).

Eventually someone would buy, because you see, it’s pretty hard to say no to a kid who camps out in front of a grocery store and makes you feel like his Troop’s summer camping trip might not happen unless you pony up 28 dollars for that tiny tin of caramel sea salt popcorn.

The other thing that surprised me was the donations! Some people didn’t want popcorn, but would randomly hand us a 20, 50 or even 100 dollar bill. It was shocking how generous our community members were.

Sometimes, people would make small talk. My son’s favorite thing was when older men would tell us about their Eagle Scout projects. One guy organized a large-scale voter registration operation. Another built a mountain biking trail at one of the state parks. Someone else built a bridge over a muddy creek. It was fascinating to hear the well-remembered details of these projects decades later!

My favorite thing was the old ladies who would say things to my son like “Boy, you got a good mama. She’s out here with you selling popcorn when she could be at home. You better be thankful for your mama” or “It’s so refreshing to see a young man out here doing something for his community, selling popcorn to raise money for his troop. You sure are raising a good kid ma’am.” Why, thank you 🥹 because we moms don’t hear that kind of thing enough!

Anyway, it took some work, but my younger son also managed to get to his goal of $3000 in popcorn sales.

So there you have it, my proof that people like kids. If it were not so, how could my sons have been eligible to earn all these amazing prizes?