So my friend Sarah and her little sister have a lemonade stand every year. They live in the middle of our small town in a close proximity to the festival that's going on right now, so there are a ton of people walking by (ideally strutting along with loose change jingling in their pockets and throats dry as old parchment).
Once any one of these hypothetical persons has spotted the colorful, marker-drawn banner reading "Eighth Annual Lemonade Stand", they will undoubtedly do one of these three things.
a) They are kindly folk who, regardless of their thirst, will come up and buy something. Or just slap a dollar on the table in approval of our avoiding the pull of electronics for an entire day.
b) They don't have money with them but will congratulate us on our ambition and try to strike up a quick conversation, as if that compensates for their lack of monetary contribution. Then they walk away and wish us luck.
c) They spot the stand from a short distance and something just goes off. Shoots a thousand pointy signals to their brains, setting every hair on end across icy skin, alerting every nerve of the imminent need for fight-or-flight; something suddenly explodes in a cacophony of blinding red lights that scream "DEATH. DEATH. DEATH."
They must avoid the children selling cold drinks at all costs.
We might as well have been serving black plague injections. Or sneaking up on random passer-bys and mugging them in the street.
So what they would do, after spotting this immediate danger of children selling lemon beverages, is cross the street before they reach us. They think, "Well, if I'm walking over here I can just pretend I don't see them. My guilt is quenched."
Sometimes they would just avert their gaze and shuffle past. Because everyone knows if you make eye contact you immediately owe a favor.
So it was one of those particularly slow forty-minute intervals. I drummed my fingers on the fold-table. We slapped lazily at flies. We sipped lemonade that quickly became sickeningly sweet and sticky to our tongues after our third glasses.
I suggested that Sarah go get her violin and advertise for us on the street corner. After all, I continued with a chuckle at my own enormous wit, I'd lug a grand piano out to the lawn but that's not exactly portable.
Her parents, who had been on the porch unbeknownst to myself, overheard and chimed in. They asked me if I wanted them to bring out their electronic keyboard, thinking I had been entirely serious. I blinked. "Well... I guess, sure," I managed, astonished, and before I had time to register what I had just agreed to they were dragging it out onto the grass with the neon orange extension cord trailing behind.
After that we fell into a routine. We'd sit, and at the sight of any meandering pedestrians they'd hustle me over to the keyboard and make me burst out in the only music I had memorized at the time and didn't require a pedal, which happened to be the Turkish March by Mozart. Some guy they kind-of knew gave us twenty dollars to split for my "performance" and because I wasn't really getting paid for helping at the stand they gave me the biggest cut, a smacking wad of Ones. Sixteen, total.
My spirits were high, my ego properly inflated, and I was banging those keys with gloriously soar fingers. After about the twentieth repetition of this a-melodic tune their neighbors closed the window to my musical genius, but I was not deterred. Unfortunately, no one else gave me any money, but whatever.
I was satisfied.
We waited for the kids from our class to arrive after closing shop. Alex showed up and we burst into applause, chatting on the lawn for a bit, but the twins were still due to arrive and gave no signs of doing such. We waited. We watched every car that passed with increasing hopelessness that consumed our beings. Sometimes we'd belt out chanting their last name like overenthusiastic cheerleaders, but our rain dance did not summon them to the scene. With heavy hearts we plodded to the festival, faces downcast in depressed delirium, but our spirits quickly rose when it came into sight.
We had fun that day. We ate overpriced roasted nuts that were lukewarm from sitting out in the humid air, bought baubles and useless nicknacks, and bumped into my public-schooled friend whose energetic companions slightly terrified my homeschooled ones.
I went home with Sarah and we ate ice cream. And played cards. And watched Megamind WHILE eating ice cream like the bosses we are.
Bless all your faces,
~Elizabeth
P.S.
I won a cheap plastic sword at the festival. It'll most like disintegrate within the month, but I totally decked it out with my sharpies and duct tape.
"My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father."
"Prepare to die."
No comments:
Post a Comment