- submitted by L. Keenan on 08/07/2008
I Brake for Lemonade Stands and You Should, Too!
By Linda Keenan
I have a simple goal here. I endeavor to make any parent who has blithely driven by a lemonade stand without even thinking of stopping feel like a massive turd. To quote the band Wilco, I am trying to break your heart.
It is now family policy that we brake for all lemonade stands, as long as we don't cause a deathly car pile-up, and if I find out my husband flew past one without a second thought, I give him a talking-to.
This policy was enacted because of one stand that has popped up several times near my house during the spring and summer. It's manned by roughly four kids, who jump and down desperately when you drive by, like tragic, pint-sized Willie Lomans.
They're out there baking in the sun, with dreams of closing a few measly sales, and what do they get? Mostly dust in their face from speeding cars.
The first time I stopped, I could see how little they make during their sweltering hours of entrepreneurial yearning, and I gave them two dollar bills and said keep the change.
They started jumping up and down again, but this time it was ecstatic, not desperate. Cost of terrible corporate lemonade and fly-bitten Nilla wafers? Two bucks. Restoring a child's faith in humanity? Priceless.
Parents might want to think twice before encouraging their kids to set up shop, because the thriving lemonade stand seems to me at least a relic of a suburb and lifestyle that once was and is no longer. I live in what's supposedly one of the most walkable suburbs in America and almost no one is walking around, or biking either.
The only groups I see hoofing it are hair-twirling tweens and compulsive joggers, and neither population is likely to stop for lemonade. The tweens just roll their eyes and keep yip-yapping about, I imagine, Gossip Girl, and the joggers crank up their iPods and fly past the stands like they're selling typhus. Stop my run for your carb-laden liqui-poison? Are you mad, child?
Sometimes I think that if it was Lucy from Peanuts out there, selling psychiatric advice at her stand for five cents a pop, she'd make a killing. (And just think if Lucy could prescribe?? You have a line of Moms out there two football fields long.)
This all means it's up to you, driver-parent. The next time you see that lemonade stand, maybe those kids will be jumping up and down like they do on my street.
Put them in slo-mo in your mind, those tiny cherub faces contorted with longing, their little limbs flailing around, begging for little more than a quarter and a kind word. Then imagine that it's your kid out there.
Is your crazy-uptight yoga teacher really going to flip if you're a minute late? Maybe. Yes, that mustache of yours is getting bushy, but can't the wax lady wait? Those kids are human beings, as Linda Loman said about her sad-sack husband Willie: attention must be paid.
Linda Keenan is a contributing writer at Burbia. Linda worked 7 years as a head writer/senior producer for various programs on CNN. Before that she worked as a writer/producer for Bloomberg TV. She now writes satire, primarily about parenting culture, at Thoroughly Modern Mommy ...read more rants
88 likes 
