Heartless

The Romgi thinks I’m heartless.

He’s wrong: I just believe in enforcing the law.

There have been a lot of news stories in the past few years about little kids having their lemonade stands shut down because they were in violation of city ordinances, which say you can’t peddle goods on a public street or sell goods in a public venue (like a farmer’s market) without a permit. You know what? I support those closures! Sob stories mean nothing to me. I always think of the line in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (yeah, I listen to it all the time in the car, really ALL THE TIME), “All this tugging at my heart-strings…”, but in my case, it’s not justified. Those little kids were in the wrong. The cops who shut them down? IN THE RIGHT.

Yesterday the Romgi sent me a link to a news article about Girl Scouts being told they couldn’t sell cookies outside the home of the Girl Scouts founder, Juliette Gordon Low, in Savannah, Georgia. The reason is that they were on the public sidewalk, which meant they were peddling. The officials were really nice, and tried to find a solution, but there wasn’t anywhere else on the property that the girls could set up shop.

I support Girl Scouts. And I love their cookies.

But I’m also heartless enough to give a little cheer for victories like this. The law is the law. No exceptions!

(This heartless attitude caused quite a stir in my student development class. We were discussing whether a man who was convicted of a felony and sentenced to jail for 10 years, then escaped and started a new life of do-good-ery somewhere else, should be turned in and sent back to jail years later if he were recognized. I may have shouted a resounding YES! My reason? He may have “made up” for his past deeds by being a philanthropist or even a saint, but it’s not his call to say that it was a fair trade. He was sentenced to jail. He doesn’t want to be in jail? GOOD! That’s the point – it’s a punishment!)

The end.

P.S. Krista, I really do support Girl Scouts. Really. Cookies soon, right?