Recently, while driving through a suburb, we came across some kids (pictured below) on a street corner, selling lemonade and cookies. I’m all for encouraging an entrepreneurial spirit in the nation’s youth, so I had to stop to patronize their establishment. (Yeah. That’s why. It had nothing to do with my weakness for cookies.)
The cookies were a dollar each, which is a little pricey. They were, indeed, home baked, but you could tell they came from one of those tubes of dough that you can buy at any grocery store. Still, the transaction made me smile.
It was a sunny day. The kids were all on bicycles, taking turns riding up and down a side street. They wore masks as they approached our car. Curb service.
They said they’d be there all week, but I suspect they’ll be bored long before then. I would bet you an additional dollar that their main motivation was their beleaguered mother saying, “I don’t care. Keep all the money. JUST. GET. OUT. OF. THIS. HOUSE!!!!”
And truly, it is nice to see kids on bicycles again. It reminds me of my youth. Kids today are usually glued to their cell phones or computers or televisions. You hardly ever see them doing anything outside. Are we raising a generation of agoraphobics? That makes me sad.
Before this one, the last actual lemonade stand I saw was about 30 years ago. A little girl, on a sleepy St. Augustine street with hardly any foot traffic at all, with a little table set up by the sidewalk in front of her house. Lemonade, 10 cents a cup.
I had to contribute. And the lemonade was horrible. It was so horrible that I can still taste it to this day. But as I walked away, I saw her running into the house, shouting, “Mommy! Mommy! I sold one!!!”
Sometimes horrible lemonade is priceless.
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The View from a Drawbridge 