Selling Lemonade

Yesterday afternoon, I took Ben outside to play and was immediately accosted by three neighborhood children. "Do you want to buy some lemonade?" a boy asked.

"How much is it?" I asked.

"Fifty cents."

Now, I knew from many garage-sale lemonade stands that the going rate in this town is a quarter, so I said, "I don't know...."

"A quarter," one of the other kids said.

"That sounds good."

I was embarassed that I'd bargained, though, when he walked back to his wagon singing, "Our first customer!" He put my coins in a wooden box and poured me a cup.

As Ben and I sat on our front step and shared a cup of lemonade, I watched the kids. The lemonade stand represented to me a friendly, interconnected community that I'm happy to be a part of. I was tickled to realize I'm now in the role of neighborhood adult.

But the neighbor kids soon ran into a problem: no customers. They had set their stand up at the end of a cul-de-sac, and no cars or people were passing by. They were learning the most important lemonade stand lesson: selling things is hard.

I don't think I ever had a lemonade stand of my own. As I remember, I would decide that it would be a good idea to sell Kool-Aid, and then my mom would point out that cups and sugar cost money. I would decide that I wasn't really committed enough to buy sugar from her, and the idea would stop there. Now that I look back at it, though, she had a point: you have to be willing to spend money in order to make money.

A few weeks ago, I was disturbed to see a pre-fab lemonade stand. I don't know where the kid had gotten it, but the sign was preprinted, with a banner overhead. It was clearly an adult's idea of a kid's lemonade stand. It made me sad; part of running a stand is making your own sign, and setting your own price.

I was ambivalent the next week when I went to a group of garage sales in a ritzy neighborhood. At first I smiled to see two competing lemonade stands across the street from each other. Then I realized both lemonade stands were donating the money to charity. The boy I bought the lemonade from didn't seem particularly engaged--his mom had to prod him. Now don't get me wrong: I have nothing against kids donating to charity. I think they should be encouraged to do so. But in this case, it seemed like one more instance of adults taking over something that had been a child's domain.

I can't think of lemonade stands without thinking of Alex Scott, a little girl who suffered from cancer for most of her life. Through articles in the Philadelphia Inquirer, I followed her story: how she got the idea to have a lemonade stand for "her hospital" when she was four, how the idea spread, how her efforts raised nearly a million dollars before she died peacefully at age eight last year. What amazes me about her story is her initiative and determination, and her desire to help others though she herself was suffering. Her foundation has raised almost $3 million dollars for pediatric cancer research. Now that's a lemonade stand.

Photo by ninecherries on flickr.com. For lemonade recipes, click here.