The Lemons Will Always Be There

I beginning to think my analogy between my real work and the lemonade stand is bit confusing. Whenever I write lemon it sounds like a bad thing. It isn't. It's simply a substitution for something I love most in the world. Also, the beelemons title sounds like it's "it be bad". I blame the blogger suggestions listed when I couldn't get thelemonadestand.blogspot. Oh well. Stuck with it now.

Moving on.

I had a lovely conversation with a customer the other day who lamented that her teenagers no longer love lemonade. I hear this a lot, and I can't blame them. Lemonade is awesome, it's perfectly balanced across the spectrum of your palette, and it's refreshing. A lot of parents are worried that their kids no longer like lemonade and they've moved on to sodas, coffee, and the dread pirate alcohol. I don't think they should worry, I don't think teenagers should be stuck with something they don't like. I also think they have a lot on their plate and need a little space to decide what they want to drink, or if they don't want to drink anything at all. The current state of our educational system seems to have heaped tons of homework on students, but sort of forgotten to let them develop personalities outside of the spectrum of school. Some of them don't know anything but school and achievement because that's all that's presented to them as important.

And I think it's becoming predominant to think that way. Children have homework in kindergarten! My God, how do you have homework when you can't read or write? But they have flash cards, and books to read, and art projects, and other stuff so they can get graded. When you're four you should get an A+ if you can dress yourself and get to the bathroom in time. That should be the official requirement, no further judgement. It sickens me to think of little ones being stunted by the grading process so early in life. I think in the race for progress and success we're killing something special and something individual. God help you if you learn differently, think differently, or just want something a little more unique than the standard school experience. Some kids are more Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein, both super duper smart but kind of weird guys, and maybe we need to make more room for different types of intelligence.

I can't do anything to change this, I don't work within the education system, but I see the struggle and the effect. But what I told the nice lady lamenting her children's beverage choices, lemons and lemonade aren't going anywhere. Eventually people can escape the shackles of education and when they do, they'll be able to find a lemonade stand somewhere near them.