insensed?

Two days before Chinese New Year, Gage's second grade class took a field trip to Chinatown in downtown San Francisco. Not sure it was the best timing to chaperone twenty kids through the crowded market streets but I opted for a yoga class instead so who knows.

Regardless, Gage came home with a few trinkets.  One was a single stick of incense.  I love incense.  We have plenty in the house and he's seen it before but this was special. This was his. 

When they first came out of class they jousted with the incense.  They are seven.  What else do you do with it?  Then apparently it planted itself in the back seat of my car somewhere. (Clearly it's not terribly scented as I hadn't noticed it all week.)

Today, on the way to his basketball game, Gage found the incense and put it behind his ear.  As one would a pen or pencil.  He then proceeded to pretend to smoke it. 

But what came next was extraordinary.  

(And presumably warranted a blog post.) 

With great detail, far more than I can muster after this long day, Gage devised a plan.  Outloud.  While I sat listening in both amazement and sheer horror.  His new product.  It's a holder for cigarettes that one would wear over their ear.  It would reach out in front of their face, as the incense did and would hold the cigarette for them so that they need not bother using their hands to smoke it.  Kind of like a headset before the birth of the bluetooth. (Those lazy smokers?!) 

But wait, it gets far better. And he did this all on the spot.  On his own.  

Apparently he would like to prove to smokers that cigarettes (which he also calls "smokers" but it would confuse you if I did that so I'll refer to them here by their given name) are bad for you by making them unaffordable.  Or, in a sense, he would like to steal the money from smokers because he thinks it's a silly habit.  His cigarette holders (which everyone would want) would cost $5 a piece BUT they would not be reusable.  So every time you wanted a $5 cigarette, you would also have to buy a new $5 holder.  (His price structure.  Not mine.)  It would be a gold mine! Because, remember, everyone would want one.

I told him that was an interesting concept.  Called him an entrepreneur and a business man. He insisted he was neither.

When we returned home two hours later we had to fill out a questionnaire for his class.  On the line that asked, "I wish people wouldn't..." he wrote "smoke".  Without any hesitation.  

On the one hand I wanted to applaud him (which I did.... duh).
But on the other I really wanted to explain that he just pissed away all of his profits.

photo by my dear friend, justine