I sat and watched most of the 1988 Republican Convention when I was 10 years old. There was something mildly interesting about it. Mom probably thought it was a bit weird but that's probably why she encouraged me, a few months later, when I said I wanted to go with my Dad to work, gathering petition signatures. Dad got paid by the signature and it was decent money for the effort required.
The first time I went with him we set up a card table and chairs in front of a post office. Dad started getting signatures on the petition and I listened. My Dad never spent a bunch of time directly discussing issues with me but I'd hear the conversations and then after the folks would leave he'd make a joke or explain why they were wrong or what they'd brought up that he had never thought of before. I learned a bunch in this way but after a while just sitting and listening became torturously boring for me. I asked Dad if I could help. He said I could ask all the people, that he missed, to come over to the table and he would explain the initiative. For everyone that signed he'd pay me ten cents. That got boring fast too and I was tired of losing people when Dad was busy talking with someone else. So I started saying the same things Dad would and they started signing. Man was I rolling in the money!
Six years later, after working with my Dad for three election cycles I was more than ready to go out on my own. While working I'd have similar conversations (or debates and arguments) with folks as Dad had for years. When I was discussing issues with folks all on my own, that's when I really started to know who I was and what I represented. It always came back to the few basics principles that Dad stood for: Constitution, Limited Government, Free Markets, Personal Rights & Personal Responsibility. Dad probably didn't realize fully what he was doing, but years later, as a father, I do.
I still gather signatures for a living. And now I take my kids to work with me. My son was the first to start going and he was 9 at the time. I remember him bringing a man over to the table, explaining the initiative we were doing, and then having the man tear into him with how "ludicrous" the idea was. It was on the 10th Amendment power of State Nullification. My son and I had read and studied for this "test" that morning. So he replied to the man:
"I know it seems ludicrous, sir, but if you read the 10th Amendment it clearly says that the States and the people have all the powers not given to Congress. And then if you look in Article 1, Section 8 it tells us what those powers are. There's only twenty of them. So if the Federal government claims a power that isn't there, it's up to the states to let them know they're wrong."
Of course, as Ben Franklin said: "A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still." So the man congratulated my boy on his "amazing knowledge" (that only took 10 minutes of reading to gain) while still holding to his opinion.
I now take three of my sons with me at different times. They do their Homeschool work and then they start helping me get signatures. They're all at different stages of development but one thing I've noticed is that they don't want to learn "boring" stuff like the Constitution at home, but when they're out with Dad they'll listen and learn. And it's not the ten cents per signature that does it. It's doing something with Dad.
Up until a couple years ago I would still go on petitioning business trips with my Dad periodically, and those are some of the best times I've spent with him.
I may stop doing signatures for a living at some point, but I'll never stop taking my kids to do things that matter. It's a family tradition of freedom, and my kids are learning who they are and what they represent.