I bought some lemonade from some little kids who had set up a lemonade stand at the end of a dead-end street yesterday.

They had two signs…one at the stand, the other about 20 feet up the road.

They’d set up by a row of mailboxes…so I was a sitting duck for a sale.

The first time they asked me, I told them I didn’t think I wanted any lemonade.

When I turned around at the end of the road and came back , I reconsidered and gave them the four quarters and bought a glass.

Lemonade is a dollar now.

When I told them I was going to buy a glass of their lemonade…when I’d pulled the trigger and made the commitment…I noticed that there weren’t any glasses on the little table they’d set up by the road.

There wasn’t any lemonade container on the table, either.

The kid with the broken arm who was sitting behind the table reached under the table and pulled out the smallest plastic cup I’d ever seen…and then he filled it from a plastic container he also had underneath the table.

When the little girl who brought me my lemonade came to the car, she reached out for the money before she handed me the little glass.

They were pretty excited to sell me a glass of lemonade.

I don’t think they were getting much drive-by traffic at the end of their country road.

It wasn’t a major thoroughfare.

The lemonade was pretty bad. It made me question my decision to buy a glass.  Then I started wondering just where this lemonade came from.  Was the kitchen clean?  Did they make it in the woods? What’s that weird aftertaste coming from?

In a Stephen King novel, the kids wouldn’t even be kids.  They’d be aliens or some demonic force waiting to implant a strain of alien DNA through the purchase of a mysterious cup of “lemonade”.

The lemonade would be swimming with evil.

I don’t think that was the case here.

These little guys were pretty sweet.

They just didn’t know how to make good lemonade yet.

There are a lot of things that I pass up because it might be a little more expensive than I’m willing to spend…or I’m nervous about where it came from…or it might look a little different than what I’m used to.

I pass up a lot.

But sometimes, it’s the right thing to just buy some lemonade from some little kids who don’t have a strong understanding of demographics and market positioning and how geography sets up a business for potential success.

All they know about the lemonade business is that you should put a lot of sugar in it…but don’t stir it too much.

That’s all they know about the business end of it.

Although…they did get my money before they gave me the product.  Maybe they’re more business savvy than I thought?

I’ll talk about the “bigness of life” until the cows come home…but then I’ll go out and buy the same crappy Little Caesars pizza because it’s cheap and it’s a brainless choice.

No conflict between my philosophy and my actions there, huh?