Parents do their part to boost economy

Economists may worry that our country is dipping into a recession, but, as a dad, I know better.

Our economy is strong, fueled largely by children's clothes.

Our home is full of enough dresses, pants, shirts, socks and assorted other kids' clothes to outfit a Third World country or at least those in elementary school.

You just can't have that many clothes without a strong economy. It also takes a lot of detergent to keep all those clothes clean.

It's amazing to me how all those clothes can get dirty at the same time. No matter how many loads of laundry Joni does, there always seems to be a constant pile of clothes in the laundry basket.

Of course, one reason for that is that Becca and Bailey are hanger-challenged. Aided by gravity, their clothes have a tendency to land on the floor, reinforcing my view that all homes should have trap doors in the floor so parents can periodically dispose of scattered clothes, toys and discarded food.

I haven't even mentioned shoes. Becca and Bailey have more shoes that I can keep track of.

Personally, I think it's a girl thing. Girls can't survive without a lot of shoes. This carries over to adults. My wife, Joni, has plenty of shoes, most of them sandals. She likes to let her toes breathe.

Myself, I have only two pairs of shoes that I regularly wear.

Of course, Becca and Bailey, as with all kids, are constantly growing, requiring new shoes and further fueling our economy.

Naturally, it makes me proud to help keep our economy afloat in these troubled times. Some free money from the bank also would help. That way, we could spend even more money on kids' clothes, shoes, socks and, yes, even winter coats.

But I guess we can't have everything. Besides, we have to put some limits on our kids' wardrobe. Otherwise, we'll need an entire laundromat to get all their clothes washed and dried in this century.

If only someone would invent self-cleaning clothes, we could dispense with doing the laundry. That would give us more time to spend buying footwear and touring those giant discount stores for the latest spending bargains.

Joni will tell you that you can never have too many bargains like those backpacks that she picked up while shopping for cookies and other essentials the other day.

Not that we need the new backpacks right now. But Joni, like all good moms, thinks ahead. She knows that you can never have enough backpacks even if you can't take them into stadiums. Besides, she's helping the economy.

The trouble with our nation's economists is that they don't realize just how important parents are to our economy. As parents, we can't cut back on school supplies and other essentials like cool sunglasses for the kids.

Perhaps what we need to do is outfit our nation's economists with kiddie sunglasses. At least that way, they won't be blinded to what's right about our economy.

And if they need some extra backpacks to haul around all those economic reports, they can contact us. We're happy to do our part to keep the economy up and running.

We'd even give them the shirts off our backs, except we don't have as many clothes as our kids.

Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.