Image by Wolfgang Eckert from Pixabay
"Wait a minute – we're gonna be trillonaires – I don't know why anybody hasn't thought of this – hey, Velma, I need your phone so I can call Pop-Pop!”
Nine-year-old Milton Trent had the idea of the whole 21st century in terms of business, just with a few problems he didn't know about yet – but his grandfather was taking a much-needed nap, so he just bounced it off his nine-year-old cousin Vertran first, and then neighboring business owner Capt. R.E. Ludlow.
“See, because you've been a good business partner to my dad, I'm going to tell you about this so you can get in on it first because we're about to disrupt a whole bunch of industries and make trillions. You see how this bread has all these seeds on it?”
“Yes, Milton.”
“You know how people go through all this work to grow wheat and then make flour, and then make dough, and then make bread?”
“Yes.”
“We're just going to start planting the bread seeds, and have a bread farm, and skip all the middlemen – now, I know that a lot of bakers are gonna be mad, but we still need people to slice the produce, and so they all can still work – and just think about how this is going to work for the Everything Bagel with all those different kinds of seeds on that one!”
Capt. Ludlow noticed his grandsons nine-year-old George and five-year-old Lil' Robert coming running.
“This is great!” George said.
“I can get my toast faster – I'm planting mine in the home garden!” Lil' Robert said.
“So, how's he going to handle this one?” Mrs. Maggie Lee said to Mrs. Thalia Ludlow.
“Oh, Robert is as intelligent as they come,” Mrs. Ludlow said, “and living with these ten kids has made him smarter every day.”
“One problem,” the captain said. “You think you are going to need scarecrows now, but let the bread grow in the field and the birds will be all over it.”
Milton, George, and Lil' Robert stopped short.
“Wheat grows like it does with the little prickles to protect the seed – it's a bit inconvenient, but that's how God made it for a reason,” the captain said.
“Well, I'm not getting into that!” Lil' Robert said.
“Yeah, we're going to have to give up the trillions,” George said.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Milton said.
“And that's a good thing,” Vertran said after he had taken some minutes thinking about it, “because the thing about disrupting other industries is that it can be dangerous. What we don't want to deal with is all the people who make plastic bags for bread coming up here with nothing but plastic bags, looking to play 'Suffocation' with whoever had the idea!”
“Oh, never mind – we were all gonna die!” Milton said.
“Well, it's like they say in the business,” Capt. Ludlow said. “Never mess with the plastics or petroleum industries.”
“Yeah, Pop-Pop says that too,” Vertran said. “Sometimes, God does stuff the way He does for everybody's protection!”
