Monday, June 8, 2009

While driving into Red Hook today, I passed a sign for a new daycare. It was called Wee People. I had to smile because I remembered years back when my sister Maureen and I had a great idea. We were sitting on the beach at Wellfleet, wondering how we could someday afford to spend our whole summer there, just laying in the sun, eating Wellfleet oysters and enjoying the good life. We came up with an idea that we could rent a big house right on the beach for the summer. Now, to pay for this lease, we would run a daycare. People could leave their kid or kids there for an hour, two hours, or even days at a time. We got this idea because all around us on the beach were kids freaking out, screaming for forgotten toys, needing a drink, having to go the bathroom, etc. Hassled parents looked like that wanted to kill themselves, wringing their hands and wondering why this was their vacation, or worse, their life. We figured they would pay big bucks to have an hour or two alone on the beach or go out to eat alone. The kids were really bad in the restaurants. After a day at the beach, they were either overtired and whining, or zapped up from too much candy at the Chocolate Sparrow. And they never liked the food offered on the menu. I remember one boy, about 10, standing up and announcing to his family and the whole restaurant that he couldn't eat Pasta Primivera one more time without throwing up. We knew we had hit about the right idea when we came up with the name: "Dump a Kid". That said it all. Not Funshine Time or Little Darling Place not even Little Rascals...just Dump a Kid, exactly what the parents were thinking. Now, we didn't want to watch these little b*$^%$^% ourselves, so we figured we could hire high school kids, even college kids that would be willing to spend their days at the beach and making some money at the same time. We played around with this idea for hours, it seemed like we had the right idea. But then we saw one kid throwing rocks at his sister in the water (insurance?), another one torturing a turtle he had found on the beach (deranged children?), kids with red faces just screaming for no reason, and we decided to give this daycare thing some more thought. But the Dump a Kid still seems to me to be the best ever name for a daycare.