Friday, December 02, 2005

Big Business on Country Village Lane

Once again, we'll retrace my childhood via Google Earth...

1 - I lived here.
2 - Larry lived here.
3 - When I was about 9, Larry and I went into business running a lemonade stand here.
4 - This is where I set up MY lemonade stand after Larry and I got into an argument. We were in direct competition - directly across the street! We didn't do too much business. No self-respecting adult wanted to stop and have to pick one of us over the other.
5 - This is where Larry and I went into business together again, right outside Ridder's Pond. With the gauranteed kid traffic, we figured we'd do a lot of business. We did! So much so that we ran out of lemonade. We were surrounded by a group of big kids (probably 12 or 13 years old), who still wanted lemonade. Larry told them he was going to go home and get another batch. We let them pay in advance.

I sat at the lemonade stand waiting for Larry to return. Twenty minutes later, I was still waiting. The Big Kids came back and asked for their lemonade. I promised them that Larry would be back, but I was already getting nervous. Another ten minutes, and they were beginning to get mad.

Another ten minutes, and Larry finally returned with a pitcher of Lemonade. My relief disappered almost immediately as we were once again surrounded by lots of Big Kids insisting that they had paid in advance. We began pouring cup after cup after cup of lemonade. Unfortunately, we ran out of lemonade before we ran out of Big Kids insisting that they had paid in advance. We had no way of knowing who had paid and who hadn't, and soon we were surrounded by Angry Big Kids demanding a refund. We had no choice but to comply. A short time later, we headed for home. We were sold out of lemonade, and we'd handed out all of our profit. Our lemonade stand days were over.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So this is how it all happened. My life feels enlightened now that I have a visual of the lemonade situation. You should adapt this into a screenplay!