Parenting question: What does the average mom say to her 16-year-old son when he wants to work as a carnival daredevil for the summer instead of scooping ice cream?

Quite simply, “No!”

Darlene Bellinger, of Pelham, wasn’t psyched that her boy was oversaturated with the thrill-seeking gene, but she didn’t immediately quash his Knievel-esque dreams. Wait till you’re 18, she said.

Justin Bellinger, a freshman criminal justice major at Springfield Technical Community College, was patient. He respected his mom’s wishes and just served as a racetrack gopher to daredevils Doug Danger and Louis “Rocket” Re. Whatever Doug and Lou asked him to do — lug around ramps, carry plywood walls, clean up debris — he did with relish.

Two years later, Bellinger is performing the Human Battering Ram act at the Clinton County Fair in Plattsburg, NY. The stunt involves lying spread-eagle on the hood of a car (with the windshield knocked out to accommodate the length of your legs) and crashing through a wall of fire.

Basically, you’re a helmeted hood ornament and you hope the fire weakens the wood enough to make an easy break. The Human Battering Ram has been performed for decades at county fairs and was even featured in the Clark Gable movie, “To Please a Lady.”

No matter if he joins a police department, correction facility or private security service after graduation, Justin Bellinger will have one of the coolest resumes ever.

You can read about daredevil internships the wisdom of storing racing fuel in Ziploc bags in this week’s Working Stiff column. If you’re curious about the daredevil subculture or the economic struggles of America’s county fairs, come down to the Woods Hole Film Festival next week for the Cape Cod debut of “Hell Drivers: “America’s Original Crash Test Dummies.”

Come meet The Working Stiff and please introduce yourself as a Herald reader after the show!

No one’s pressuring me to take a position on the wax Hitler beheading at Madame Tussaud’s museum in Berlin.

But after about 15 seconds of deep introspective thought, I’m all for it.

I wonder if Hitler’s head is now sitting in a pool of beer on the floor of some German frat house.

Above is a Reuters photograph of a Tussaud’s museum employee assigned to guard Hitler’s bunker after the decapitation.

At this point, what is the guard protecting? Hitler’s hat was already squirreled away as a precaution. Those dusty books don’t look like they are worth stealing, but is there a fear of an old fashioned Nazi book burning (with fake Nazi books)?

(As an aside, if you have not seen Jeff Krulik’s phenomenal documentary, “Hitler’s Hat,” about U.S. troops who snagged Hitler’s top hat as a war souvenir, you MUST see it).

Getting rich in the t-shirt business looks simple: Come up with a clever slogan, create a snazzy graphic — and ka-ching, ka-ching!

Last week’s “Working Stiff” column brought you the sad story of Kenmore Square street entrepreneurs George Austin and Jason Kenney — and their basement filled with unsold “Sign Curt Schilling for 2008″ t-shirts. I still say these would make great raffle prizes at the next sports agent convention.

But Herald readers had other ideas for recycling these Sox souvenirs:

SEND THEM TO THE TROOPS (Christine Inman)

“I am a buyer for the US Postal Service here in Boston. Months ago we ordered about 150 tee shirts for one of our programs. They came in with the correct logo but with a word spelled wrong in the program name (”visability instead of visibility). I contacted the vendor and they re-did the order. I was left with 150 tee shirts in all sizes. I couldn’t just give them away locally because they had our logo on them but I also did not want to throw them away. Perfectly good new tee shirts!

So - I decided to send them to Iraq and Afghanistan for the troops. I went to the web site www.anysoldier.com where soldiers post emails daily asking for supplies they need desperately. Click on “Where to send” and use the search box to type in “tee shirts” or “T Shirts.” I found plenty of requests for clean new tee shirts!

I split my shipment between 3 addresses….one in Iraq, one in Afghanistan and one in Kuwait. One of these was a request from an Air Force orthopedic surgeon who runs a hospital for wounded soldiers. So, our 150 shirts are on their way right now and I am so glad they will be put to good use!

I also inadvertently found a use for the 60 or so Beanie babies I have stashed in a closet. These are worth practically nothing and I want to get rid of them. Servicemen in Iraq are looking for toys they can give to local children in the villages. These poor kids are growing up in terrible circumstances.”

HANG ON TO YOUR INVESTMENT (Rich Feinberg)

“Be patient… Box them up for storage, keep them clean and free from mildew, wait 15 or 20 years, then sell them as rare collectibles to the nostalgia market (with certificates of authenticity proving they’re genuine souvenirs from ’07).”

CLOTHE THE CHILDREN (Andrea Dimartino)

“They should donate those T-Shirts to the Christian Children’s Fund or Children International. These groups work with impoverished families and would be able to send the shirts to where there are families most in need of help. If neither of these groups wants the shirts, they can likely point you in the direction of someone who will.”

SEND THEM SPECIFICALLY TO FANNING ISLAND (Julie Wilson)

“Five years ago while on a cruise (we are so lucky here in this wonderful country, especially Red Sox’s Nation), we made a stop to Fanning Island way out in the Pacific Ocean (part of Micronesia). The people there are so poor, but also so joyous and thankful for the little things in life. The children greeted the ship with song and were especially happy just to receive some pencils and candy.

“I have never forgotten this place…. They say it is like Hawaii was back when they even had to rely on the cruise ships stopping here as a means of getting food in exchange for use of the Island for a day.”

Well, George and Jason, there’s now no excuse to let your Sox threads rot for eternity.

What will it be? Micronesia? Iraq? Afghanistan?

Stay tuned…

Some people will call in sick to work for any excuse, but which events are worth sacrificing a real vacation day? Judging on the crowd that swarmed teeny Unity, NH last Friday for the Democratic Party Love-In, thousands of political junkies took the day off to see Barack and Hillary pledge their devotion to one another.

My friend, photographer Ilya Mirman, and I were among those who traded a beach day for a news junkie day. Unlike most of the crowd, who’d have to be insane to call in sick and show up to an internationally televised event, we had no emotional attachment to the senators on stage.

But nonetheless, we felt disrespected. Ilya explains why…

By guest blogger Ilya Mirman

Like a couple thousand other working stiffs, I got up at 5am last Friday and trekked to the first joint campaign event by Senators Obama and Clinton, symbolically held in a town called Unity, NH. The event was a blast – a front row seat to the American political process: speeches from political royalty, a colorful spectrum of protesters, and reasonably priced burgers and hot dogs. Unfortunately, the event was also a case study in poor logistical planning and execution, a portent of what we might encounter in the months ahead.

The first five hours of waiting were reasonable, and par for the campaign season course. Because there were no parking facilities at Unity Elementary School that could accommodate the large crowd, we wound up parking several miles away, and waited several hours for school buses to shuttle us to the site. Sure it was hot, but the crowd was jovial, and passed time telling Democratic campaign war stories. We were then taken to within a half mile of the school and stood in line, ultimately snaking our way through the metal detectors to join the rest of the crowd.

The temperature reached 90 and kept rising, but no matter – there was electricity in the air, we were excited to hear from the rivals that battled for so many months before. For entertainment, I checked out some of the more wacky protesters, and eavesdropped on food ordered by the Secret Service’s sniper team (five hotdogs – not sure if it was five snipers wanting a hotdog each, or one really hungry sniper).

By early afternoon, Hillary and Barak came on, gave their speeches, and were very well received. It was then that the event started to unravel. Because our cars were miles away, we were at the mercy of the school buses – buses that were nowhere to be found. Half the crowd obeyed instructions on where to wait for the buses, whereas the rest broke through several openings in the barricades.

Perhaps a metaphor for Democratic domestic policy, the lawbreakers won. They were rewarded with the first trips out of claustrophobia — while the rule-abiding citizens who waited their turn in line were the suckers, the last ones to get on the buses.

Volunteers were not only clueless as to the buses’ whereabouts, but also unable to carry out basic crowd control. The people who waited their turn in line were getting dehydrated and poured water over babies’ heads to cool them down. Some people in line nearly fainted, and paramedics had to step in.

One elderly gentleman lamented to a staffer, “We’ve waited in line since 8am, we’re waiting in line now, the event ended an hour ago, you still have no buses here – we’ve given money so you can have these events, we pay the salaries, and this is how you treat us?!”

The response was an irritated “Sir – I’m a volunteer – I don’t get a salary!” rather than, say, “I will find out where the buses are” or “I will make sure that those in this line is the first to board the next bus.” Those in line had to endure more than one staffer lamenting that “we’re powerless,” we’re “just volunteers.” Those of us respecting the system watched helplessly as others boarded the very buses promised to us “next.”

When challenged on it, a staffer pretended it was “a press bus” though it was clearly not. My 200mm camera zoom confirmed the sign on the bus.

Needless to say, there was no notion of tickets handed out, or hand stamps, to provide any semblance of order for the buses, and it’s a miracle that pandemonium did not ensue. With the crowd reaching delirium, more than a few were grumbling that this might be a preview for how the country will be run – great speeches, only to be followed up by grave incompetence in execution.

By the end of the day, I realized that I’ve seen better coordination in the mosh pit of a Velvet Revolver concert, and that this political campaign could borrow a page from the customer service training I once received during stints at McDonald’s and Burger King.

So, in the spirit of leveraging best practices from across the business spectrum, here’s a couple suggestions for the Obama ’08 campaign’s event planning committee:

• Borrow a playbook from traveling carnivals - they excel at managing crowds, lines, and ticketing for various rides.

• If you force attendees to park far away, have shuttles ready an hour before the event is over, rather than an hour after.

• Take a lesson from the Boy Scouts - train volunteers to act and to lead, rather than argue with your most dedicated constituents.

• If you are going to keep people standing in sweltering heat, and have raised over a quarter billion dollars, consider giving out free water before the crowd begs you for it.

• If you choose to not give them water, plan on having more than two ambulances to tend to those fainting.

Here’s the irony. The challenge of putting on this event should have been in bringing the two candidates together, having them exhibit good chemistry on stage, having great speeches in terms of both content and sincere delivery.

The logistics of an outdoor rally – after over a year of similar events and rallies nationwide – should have been a slam-dunk. Instead, it was the other way around. Maybe that’s a good thing, in that the latter is easier to fix for next time. Let’s hope they do.

Especially in today’s economy, it’s a cheap shot to automatically mock 20-somethings who still live with their parents. But it’s totally legit to scoff at college grads who choose to stay in their childhood bedrooms with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle drapes.

In case you missed it, The Working Stiff recently chatted about the new bumper crop of “Millennial” employees with gregarious 96.9 FM talk show host Michael Graham — who also charms the masses on the Herald’s Ed-Op page.

You can eavesdrop on our engaging conversation here.

The Millennials, the generation born after Generation X, are burdened with the unflattering stereotype of being self-absorbed, iPod-addicted slackers who expect to be babied by the boss. As I explored in this week’s Working Stiff column, some of these “kids” deserve that label. But others, such as my 6-year-old son, should be judged on the quality of their work first.

Yup, babies born in 2002 fall under the Millennial demographic. What these first graders have in common with 26 year olds in cubicles baffles me.

Also, highly recommended is Morley Safer’s biting piece about Millennials on “60 Minutes.”