|
|
Sweatshop in our attic
Aviva is into sewing now. In addition to various more ambitious projects, she has been mending rips in jeans, shirts, what have you. She charges a swiss franc -- 89 cents -- a rip... which seems fair as I have to thread the needle and untangle the occasional tangle.
Recently she was in the middle of some altercation with Noah when, just as things were heating up, she noticed that he had a rip in the knee of his jeans. "Noah!" she cried. "Can I sew that?" "Sure," he said, and took off his pants. She went in search of her sewing kit.
So then we were at the church of the in-laws, at the Suppentag, drinking our soup which was, according to the placemats, to raise money to do something about child labor. I felt obligated to raise Aviva's consciousness about the issue.
Me: You know, some kids have to work every day.
Aviva: Really? Can I do that?
Me: No, I mean, not like fun work, like they have to work all day. Like, 10 hour days.
Aviva: Sounds good to me!
Me: For very little money.
Aviva: How much exactly?
Me: Like, a dollar a day.
Aviva: A whole dollar? Every day?
Me: Doing difficult work in bad conditions, like, um, sewing soccer balls in poor lighting...
Aviva: WHAT?? You can SEW soccer balls? That is AWESOME!
Me: okay, the first ten soccer balls would be fun but after a thousand soccer balls you would be wishing you were back in school!
Aviva: LIKE THAT WOULD EVER HAPPEN!!!
