Someone’s Singing, Lord

I used to snicker and roll my eyes at the mere mention of a Bake Sale. This is not 1950 where the only skill we homemakers have is making and hocking muffins to raise money for our kids’ school. We used to be attorneys and accountants, doctors and teachers. Some of us billed out at $250 an hour, for God’s sake. And now someone is asking us to turn out a batch of brownies. For profit?

Two weeks ago there were 4 volunteers over 3 hours selling various donated items. They made $100. Quick math pencils out to a little over $8 an hour each. Isn’t that minimum wage?

I am in charge of raising money for the 5th grade class trip to Niagara Falls next year and the PTA offered up this past weekend’s basketball concessions for us to get a jumpstart on our fundraising efforts. I figured that rather than making a fuss, I would just go along with the program.

A few e-mails netted us some very tantalizing homemade goods. I was drooling over the chocolate chip cookies, blondies, apple galettes, cocoa butter wafers, and cinnamon rolls hot out of the oven…we even had pizzas, fresh fruit and popcorn.

The other volunteers were coy, not wanting to overprice things. Hello! The last time I made $8 an hour I was 12 years old! So we asked top dollar and none of our customers flinched. We even had some big spenders tell us to “keep the change.”

In addition to other moms, a dad, a custodian, my two sons and some of their classmates helped run operations.

I’ll confess I’ve been in charge of projects that yielded higher returns for less investment. I took on the assignment prepared to change everything. This expert was going teach Ithaca how to make some real cash. But, sitting at home Saturday night after a dinner of pizza, fruit cups and cookies, I was thinking about how successful the sale was, how much fun we all had and how it really felt like a community effort.

I never thought I’d say this, but it was worth it. One little boy had a sandwich baggie full of change and bought at least a half a dozen treats, one at a time, throughout the day, right up until the end when he hoped I would take his last 67 cents for a 75 cent bag of popcorn.

When was the last time you felt like singing “Kumbaya”??