"Dad, I’m bored"

You need to understand how rare it is that one of my children would admit to being bored. It has been several years since any of them have dared to utter the phrase “There’s nothing to do.” I cured that long ago by handing the person who said it a small shovel and a plastic bag to do something we like to call “Poop Patrol.” We have two large dogs…

So my youngest must have been VERY bored when he came to me today. This time I had something different in mind. We’d recently had a dinner conversation about Carbon Credits and Carbon Neutrality. I explained that companies that put out a bunch of carbon can buy credits from a company that doesn’t put out as much carbon in order to avoid governmental fines. I took it a step further and asked why couldn’t people sell Personal Carbon Credits where they would do something green in exchange for someone else who didn’t want to make the effort but still wanted to feel good about themselves (see my post from Monday for an example…).

So, rather than just sit around watching TV -- and in an effort to avoid Poop Patrol, Curtis set up shop selling Kool-Aid and Carbon Credits.

There were three, one-dollar options today:

1) Curtis will ride his bike to school and his dad will ride his bike to work for a day so you can drive and not feel bad about it.

2) We will raise our thermostat two degrees so you can lower yours two degrees for one day.

3) Curtis will play outside for the day and not use any electricity to watch TV, play video games or use the computer.

He made three bucks today; all of it in Kool-Aid sales. He did have one person ask about the carbon credits and he explained that, like big business, they could pay him to do something environmentally friendly so they didn’t have to -- but could still feel good about themselves. They thought that was kind of dumb. Why should they pay him to do something that they should be doing themselves? Yeah. Exactly.