Jim Wasserman

Enough Stuff Jim Wasserman

The residents of a small village are in the midst of their yearly holiday shopping. Typical is young Anita Lot, who madly hurries to both buy presents for others and, more, to make sure she gets the gifts she wants. Over the years, the holiday has gone from being a light-hearted GOOF (Grateful Of Our Friends) to a bunch of GOOP (Grateful Of Our Presents). When a visitor says that all the frantic shopping makes the villager seem like they can't get enough, the villagers decide that, whatever is this strange word or thing called enough, they must get it...at any cost! Will the villagers learn what is "enough?" Will they discover if they already have enough? Will the local store owner, Seymour Sales, find a way to package and sell enough to keep his GOOP-y holiday from becoming GOOF-y again? The answers turn out to be buried...somewhere. This is a play, written for a 3rd - 6th grade level. Of course, it can also be read as a story (and having fun with the different voices!). The first and primary goal of this work is to entertain. A secondary, but important, goal is to introduce the topics of consumerism and marketing. Conditioning children through marketing to be the next generation of wanton consumers begins earlier and earlier. Children see the fun in shopping and gifting, but in fact they are part of a game they not only don't even know they are playing, but are being played by seasoned adult marketers where the stakes are not just the children's (and their parents') money, but their life-long values about consumerism. Chasing new stuff to buy is not always a bad path to follow, but there are other roads to happiness, and many of them are toll-free! So, let's take the spotlight, at least some of the time, off of "Next?" and focus on what we already have, and how that can be "enough."