My child's CEO aspirations were quashed after just a day of managing fake employees.

He is one of 12,000 St. Louis-area students who will get a dose of reality this year at BizTown: one of the most valuable elementary school field trip experiences I've encountered as a parent.

It's offered by Junior Achievement (J.A.), a nonprofit organization with 114 chapters across the U.S., which aims to educate students about entrepreneurship, work readiness and financial literacy. The St. Louis chapter, in addition to about 30 others nationwide, has a mock mini-city in which students spend the day learning how the "real world" works.

Each of the fifth-graders in our school applies for a job in one of BizTown's 17 businesses. They spend the day running the town -- working, making financial decisions, paying taxes, shopping and running errands.

Imagine my delight when my youngest chose to work as CEO of MasterCard. (Businesses that sponsor the hands-on learning center are named in the town.) Perhaps this will be the first of several CEO positions, I said to him, hoping to plant a seed.

He headed to school in a pressed suit and tie, ready to conquer the world.

He came back a broken man.

"Oh my God, I don't want to be an adult," he said.

He ranted about his day as took off his suit jacket and loosened his striped tie.

"First of all, there was a guy who couldn't do his work," he started. "Then, I had to sign my name about a hundred times. There was a problem with the payroll tax. I had to update the system five times before I could get it to work. And then I had to send the bill to the printer, and they denied it. Two times! Only one person paid their taxes on time. I had to work a double shift on a station I didn't even know how to do. And some people took way too long on their breaks."

Worn out and weary, he kicked off his dress shoes and said: "Everything hurts."

To anyone who has managed employees, his experience has the ring of truth to it.

Lori Jacob, president of J.A. of Greater St. Louis, said the great thing about the BizTown experience is that it gives students a chance to realize the relevance of what they are learning in school. Participating schools complete 20 hours of a financial literacy curriculum, and the trip to BizTown is the capstone experience. It costs schools about $15 per pupil, which is roughly half the actual cost of the program. Business sponsors subsidize the programming.

The program is so popular that a school that missed its day due to a snowstorm offered to come back once the students had been dismissed for summer. And they did. Another school made up a missed day on a Saturday.

Jacob said J.A. would love to accommodate more students, but their BizTown is booked throughout the year. J.A. would need support from business sponsors to build another location to serve more students.

For any business that has bemoaned the lack of a qualified workforce, here's a chance to invest in teaching students skills that are critical to workplace success. Giving students a chance to run a business and manage their peers as employees is an eye-opening experience at this age.

It leaves an impression.

I asked my daughter what she remembered from her class's trip there two years ago. To my chagrin, she had applied to be the reporter at the radio station. (Please consider a more reliable and profitable line of work, my child.)

"I learned that some people are bossy," she said. "And some people can't do math."

The CEO of the radio station where she was working ordered 500 pieces of coal instead of five due to a calculation error.

Another pearl of wisdom: "You shouldn't trust some people with a microphone."

That sounds about right.

She admitted that being a reporter was the best job in BizTown because "you can leave the radio station at any time to do whatever. You have a pass to do that."

It's hard to argue with that.

In their fake jobs, the students learned a few truths about the way the world works.

A box arrived at my work with a seductive message.

It promised "the pouty lips you always wanted. Naturally."

I had not given much thought to the state of my lips, but I supposed that maybe they could be a little plumper.

"What harm could there be in trying a device that doesn't involve needles or chemicals?" I thought. The company had sent my office the CandyLipz Xtreme Lip Shaper to be tested, so why shouldn't I test it? In retrospect, when "lips" is spelled with a Z and "extreme" with a capital X, it may be a red flag about the scientific validity of the product.

I vaguely recalled hearing about some ridiculous "lip challenge" that had been making the rounds among teenagers, but this wasn't that, of course. This product came in a fancy box and retailed for $69.99.

I handed the instructions to a colleague, who seemed a little too amused and eager to spearhead the experiment. After inserting my lips in the mouthpiece, I was told to compress the sides of the cylinder. When I released the tube, it created a vacuum that sucked my lips into the plastic tube.

It hurt.

I looked at the fashion editor who had been guiding this misadventure, and she said the directions said to keep it dangling there for two minutes.

It hurt a lot. When the two minutes were up, I broke the seal and peeled my lips out.

They were definitely swollen. Within minutes, I saw a reddish-purple ring form around my lips.

I looked like I had been punched in the mouth.

The discoloration around my mouth got darker by the hour. My colleague advised me to find an ice pack. By the time I got home, hours later, it looked like my mouth had been lined with black marker.

"Look what I did," I said to my family.

"What happened?" my 13-year-old daughter asked. I described the product I had tried at work.

"You know you just basically did the Kylie Jenner lip challenge, right?" she said, making no effort to contain her smirk.

"No. Noooooooo."

The indignity of being called out by your child stings more than sticking your lips in a vacuum. Trust.

My husband took one look at the ring of dark bruising around my mouth and said: "You are not a child. And you are not a Kardashian."

Duh.

I didn't have to pout. I was already there.

"I MADE A BAD CHOICE," I announced to all parties who would be witnessing the results of said choice for days to come.

My ego was bruised far worse than my lips.

Sometimes it's difficult to remember how the teenage brain operates. We may recall that we did some foolish things in our youth, but the plus side of thinning hair (and lips) is that experience and maturity make those occurrences far less common over the years.

When confronted with some ridiculous behavior, we may be tempted to ask an otherwise intelligent young adult: What in the world were you thinking?

So what makes teenagers -- and, ahem, the occasional columnist -- take such foolish chances?

A study out of New York University suggests that adolescents are not inherently risk-takers, but they are more likely than adults to take actions when they don't fully know or understand the consequences of their actions.

"In risky situations where you know the outcomes and the probability of the outcome, teenagers didn't take more risks than adults," a lead researcher told LiveScience about the study in 2012. "Teenagers went for the risky option when the outcome was not exactly known." When adolescents know an activity's potential dangers more precisely, they are less likely to participate.

Had I read the accompanying instructions on the Xtreme Lip Shaper myself and known that 80 percent of users end up with bruises on their face, I would have found someone else to test the product. Clearly, there wasn't much forethought involved. I was reminded how easily rational adults can fall prey to marketing and peer pressure.

For five days, I took pictures of my damaged lips and studied the photos for signs that the marks were fading.

"I can't believe I did this to myself," I thought each time. I also took herbal remedies, and watched videos and read articles on how to heal bruises faster.

As the days passed, I also embraced my humility and vowed to remember this feeling when one of my children does something head-shakingly dumb.

There's a thin line between a fat lip and a fathead.

Lucy, a sweet-looking toddler with wispy blond hair, needs $450 for head shots because a talent agency is "very interested." Her mother wants you to chip in to "start her on her road to success."

A Washington University student would like some help buying a piano because she can't use the practice rooms on campus. They aren't always open, you see.

There's a local high school student with a 3.67 GPA who wants to take a 10-day trip to Costa Rica during spring break. Her mother would like you pitch in, because her daughter "could really use a trip like this for stress relief."

Or you could throw in a few dollars for a high school rugby team in San Francisco that needs money for a trip to Australia and New Zealand.

These are all public pleas for donations from the crowdfunding site GoFundMe.com, which has collectively raised a billion dollars for a multitude of causes in the past year alone.

Giving has always been a social act, one that binds people together and encourages reciprocity. Now, it's also a social media act.

In one way, it's been a blessing to be able to help people with unexpected funeral or medical expenses, or those dealing with some other crisis or disaster. It's rewarding for the giver to help a friend or stranger during a difficult time.

It's not so rewarding to see people begging for money for boob jobs, lavish birthday parties or vacations.

One mom, and certainly not the only one, posted that she wants to throw her 1-year-old a $1,000 birthday bash; won't you pitch in? (For the record, she surpassed her goal and raised $1,095.)

The number of birthday-related campaigns within the "Celebrations and Special Events" category on GoFundMe has "skyrocketed," according to a site spokesman. There was a 330 percent increase in donation volume for birthday campaigns between 2013 and 2014.

Sites such as GoFundMe have a financial stake in promoting and normalizing this uncouth behavior: They take a 5 percent cut of whatever is raised. There's also a 3 percent fee for their payment processors. Your charity or good will is their for-profit business enterprise. Also, it's "giver beware" in each of these transactions, because there's no oversight to see if the donations go toward their stated purpose.

Offline, if someone asks for money (for anything), and someone else wants to give, it's a private interaction between those two parties.

But when that transaction happens in a public space, it reminds the rest of us that we have to teach our children a value we may have taken for granted: It's not acceptable to ask friends or strangers to pay for your luxuries or to fund your wish list. The sheer volume of such shameless requests -- for things from dream weddings and cosmetic surgery to children's hobbies or sports equipment -- makes me wonder why anyone thinks it's OK.

Has crowdfunding replaced the hustle? Or has it become the new hustle?

The apparent logic is: If someone wants to give, why shouldn't I ask? There's a simple answer: It's greedy and lacking in self-pride. Would you stand on a street corner, holding a sign, asking for spare change for your daughter's cheerleading uniform or your son's football camp? Because it looks just as ridiculous to pass the tin cup on the information superhighway.

You're not asking people to fund a shortfall in your budget. You're asking them to fund a shortfall in your priorities.

No one should feel guilty for declining to donate to another able-bodied person's wish list. The world is full of causes and people with needs more compelling than a birthday trip to Mexico.

In fact, those who succumb to social pressure when they are tagged on Facebook with such ridiculous fundraising requests are enabling a culture of entitlement.

Here's a radical idea: Go fund yourself.