They say money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy happy memories. Welcome to What Would You Buy? where each issue will have a different theme. Recognize the name? Well, this will be just like the show, What Would You Do? Except for the fact that we have no cameras, no directors, producers, actual scenarios, the victims of my interrogation won’t be judged as hardcore as if they let a thief go by, note the as… and, oh, it’s not a TV show. You know, so similar. This issue’s question: What would you do if you had a budget of $500 and had to plan a fun event for your grade?
My first victim? Felix Hemstreet, my unfortunate carpool-partner who you can bet will be in pretty much every single one of these. Her event for 7th grade? A second Halloween, nevermind the fact that as Hemstreet says, “I won’t even end up eating my Halloween No.1 candy, anyway, but what’s the harm in having even more?” Well, besides the massive landfill a second Halloween would create, really, there’s no harm. This second day of stuffing faces with no self-restraint would include a whole school day of trick-or-treating to classrooms, while the rest of the school can- sorry -that makes it sound like a choice-will, look on in agony as they are forced to find the volume of our bulging candy bags… and am I a parental genius or what? Parents should really use that as punishment more often. I’ll admit, Felix soon retracted the whole “Make other grades miserable by rubbing our happiness *and sugar* in their faces,” when she realized this would be published, but I do think it’s a valid idea if any grades are being especially annoying. Now the ultimate question… can you actually last a whole day of feeding 120 or so trick-or-treaters with only $500? I turned to the almighty Amazon for this question, but it turns out, Amazon doesn’t have a feature in which you can buy $500 dollars worth of candy, which is really just such a disappointment, but from some sleuthing around, it was pretty obvious that there wouldn’t be unlimited candy. However, to help out with the lack of candy, it was decided we could make it up with food. So, whoever collected the most calories at the end of the day would get to attempt to balance their sugar intake with tacos from their earned $20 TacoBell gift card. #IWishWeCouldSay #NotSposoredBecauseItWouldMeanWe’re #Famous. #Goals. And to finish this dream-worthy yet unrealistic day, Hemstreet suggested every 20th piece of candy given out is accompanied by an iPod, never mind the fact that a few iPods alone would take up all the budget. But besides these flaws, I believe this holiday certainly works, and fine-it may be because of bias in me wanting candy, but I think this Halloween #2 is an actual plausible dream. Do note the dream.
My second victim? The journalist sitting to my left as I write this. She says she would burn the $500 on a DJ that would play through the whole school day for an auditorium of GALA’s 7th graders. That’s it. A DJ DJing(if that’s even a word), all day. Now, apparently, you can’t buy people on Amazon, who knew? But you can buy them on multiple DJ websites, one of which I just spent way too much time getting a quote on. And unlike Felix’s fantasy, this might actually work. Basically, a DJ all day, with no lights, photo booths, or anything of that frilly nature would come in at around $495, so just barely making it. But, hey, it still works! The only problem? That 7th graders can barely stay focused and awake for 30 minutes, much less a whole day with no breaks, entertainment, etc. It certainly would, however, limit the number of students listening to music with headphones around the campus. #Perks.
If any surprises coming out of this questionnaire besides #InflationIsReal, and #INeedToStopUsing#s, it would be that sugar wasn’t my fellow anonymous reporter’s event’s theme. Wow. That was really surprising. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some leftover Halloween No.1 candy to consume. Mwahaha…
Maya Henry, 2024- Columnist
Photo Credit: Investor Place
A reverberation of GALA student voices 