When Life Gives You Lemons
WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS – April 25, 2025 – Smyrna, Tennessee, USA
When Principal Kaden DeGraw was called to an emergency in Springview Elementary’s cafeteria, he imagined the worst. He was sure he would find a student crushed by crates of milk cartons or an exploded wall where the ovens once stood. Instead, all he found was the very agitated lunch lady, Mercedes Carrizo.
Principal DeGraw usually enjoyed his visits with Mercedes. She was funny and full of life. Unlike the school’s teachers, she seemed to appreciate him. When she wanted a new rule for the cafeteria or more student helpers, the principal always saw things her way. She owed a good part of her persuasive powers to her pretty face and flirty smile.
“Mr. DeGraw, I don’t know what to do,” Mercedes cried while clasping her cheeks with both hands.
“Is someone hurt?” Principal DeGraw asked as he looked toward the closed door that led to the kitchen.
“No.”
“Anything broken?”
“No.”
The principal sighed in relief. “Then I’m sure things can’t be that bad. What’s the problem?”
“Follow me.”
Mercedes walked with him into the kitchen where cardboard boxes were stacked into the aisles dividing counter space from stoves and refrigerators. “There’s no room in here and there’s more boxes on the loading dock.”
“Where did they come from? What’s inside?”
“Lemons.”
Mr. DeGraw stared at the white boxes the size of laundry baskets. A lemon logo was printed on the sides of each one.
“A truck driver brought them,” Mercedes continued. “He said they were for the school. I told him there was a mix-up. We wouldn’t need this many lemons in ten years. But he wouldn’t listen. He said he had to leave the lemons or take them to the dump. I hate to hear of anything going to waste like that, so he started unloading. And unloading. And unloading.”
“How many boxes are there?”
Mercedes raised her worried hands to her cheeks again. “I’m afraid to count. And there’s no room to cook and they’re going to sit here until they rot. Oh, what can we do?” She looked helplessly into the principal’s eyes.
“We’ll figure it out,” the principal replied, putting a comforting arm around Mercedes’ shoulder. “It could be a lot worse. At least the boxes haven’t fallen on anyone. Let’s count and find out how many we’re dealing with.”
As he counted with Mercedes, Mr. DeGraw tried to think of a solution to the lemon problem. How could they possibly be useful to the school? He had not come up with an answer by the time the total box count reached 210. He and Mercedes were out on the kitchen’s loading dock by that point.
“That’s a lot of lemons,” Mr. DeGraw said while shaking his head. Then he twitched as if he made his mind up about something. “You know what, I’m tired of solving all the problems around here. It’s about time the teachers showed initiative. We’ve got 21 classrooms. If we divide up the lemons equally, each class gets ten boxes. That’s perfect. We’ll let the teachers figure it out.”
There was no time to write up a memo about the plan because Mercedes needed space in the kitchen immediately. The principal got on the school’s public address system and made an impromptu general announcement.
“This is Mr. DeGraw with an exciting opportunity for every classroom. Someone donated boxes of fruit to the school and we’re going to divide them up equally. Each class gets ten boxes. I’m going to let the teachers decide how to creatively use them for an educational purpose. If you’ve got older kids capable of carrying boxes, maybe the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders, send them to the cafeteria. For the classes with younger students, the janitor and I will deliver your boxes.”
The announcement sent the school into a frenzy for the next two hours. Older kids swarmed the cafeteria where Mercedes shouted commands about how to lift boxes from stacks and where to drag them. Mr. DeGraw and a disgruntled janitor made twenty trips each dumping lemon boxes into lower-grade classrooms using moving dollies. At first, teachers were interested and welcoming of the deliveries. Then they discovered the fruit they were promised consisted entirely of lemons.
“What am I supposed to do with these?” one first-grade teacher asked the principal. “Can I swap them for apples?”
“Nope. All we’ve got is lemons.”
“Why? They aren’t very practical. No one wants to suck on a lemon.”
“I know. But think outside the box. I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”
In Mrs. Woo’s fifth-grade-class, students returned from the cafeteria winded from dragging lemon boxes down the hallway. They left the boxes just inside their classroom’s doorway.
“These are all filled with lemons,” Mrs. Woo said in exasperation. “You need to take them back and get other kinds of fruit.”
“That’s all there is. All the boxes are the same,” one tired student explained.
Mrs. Woo furrowed her brow and said under her breath, “What’s wrong with this school? Only a dummy like Mr. McGraw would buy a bunch of lemons and think they were useful.”
She lifted one of the box’s lids to reveal the bright yellow orbs inside. She picked up a lemon and pressed it against her nose. It smelled citrusy fresh but Mrs. Woo knew that if lemons sat around for more than a few weeks, that fresh scent would turn rancid. She would need to use them up quickly. She imagined lemon-based art projects and making lemon batteries, but that would only get rid of one box. What about the other nine?
Then Mrs. Woo smiled and said to herself, “Wait a minute. Why am I so worried about this? Parents always say they want to help out the class. Here’s something for them to do.”
“Okay everyone, listen up. You’re going to do something fun this weekend,” Mrs. Woo announced to her class. “Everyone gets to take home as many lemons as you want.”
A boy in the front row of desks could hardly believe his good fortune and asked, “Really? As many as we want?”
Mrs. Woo eyed the lemon boxes. “Let’s say as many as one box each. If you don’t want an entire box, you can fill up your backpacks with as many as you can carry. Who wants a whole box?”
Levi Houghton was one of several students who raised his hand. He did not worry about what he would do with the lemons, he simply wanted as many as he could get.
“We need to make this educational,” Mrs. Woo continued. “After you do something creative with your lemons, I need you to write a paragraph for me. It should start with the phrase ‘When life gives you lemons . . .’”
By the time Levi’s mom arrived to fetch him from school, he had dragged his box of lemons all the way to the sidewalk next to the pick-up zone. Levi motioned to the box and then the back of the SUV.
“Can you help me lift this inside?”
“What is it?” his mom asked as she opened her door to get out.
“Lemons. I got a whole box.”
Before his mom could ask more questions, Levi strained to lift the box into the SUV’s now open rear hatch. His mom bent over to help.
“I don’t understand. Why lemons?”
“It’s for a school project. I’m supposed to be creative with them. And then write a paragraph. Something about when life gives you lemons.”
Levi’s mom lifted the box’s lid to verify it was loaded with lemons. By the time she got back in the SUV’s driver’s seat and pulled away from the sidewalk, she was too worried about her own son’s lemons to notice all the other kids dragging lemon boxes toward cars.
“Did your teacher give you any ideas? A whole box of lemons is kind of a lot.”
“She said it’s up to us. Jackson Milroe was talking about putting them in his swimming pool and shooting them with a nail gun.”
“Hmm. I don’t think that’s a very good idea. Did he get a whole box too?”
“No, he just filled up his backpack.”
Levi’s mom continued to think about lemons as she drove. “When I hear that phrase, ‘When life give you lemons,’ I naturally want to finish it by saying ‘make lemonade.’ Maybe you should make lemonade.”
“Is it hard?”
“It’s mostly squeezing juice out of lemons then adding sugar and water. But all those lemons will make more than we’ll ever drink. Maybe you could set up a stand and sell it.”
Levi loved the lemonade stand idea. After his mom’s suggestion, his imagination took over. He pictured himself with a table, sign, pitcher, and stack of cups. He speculated over how many hundred lemonade servings he would sell and how much he might charge for each one. When they got home, his mom showed him how to extract juice using a manual lemon squeezer with a ridged knob that emptied into a collecting bowl. Levi went to work cutting lemons and watching drops of juice collect as he pressed them against the extractor.
After ten lemons, Levi asked his mom if that would be enough. The box still looked full.
“Keep going. You don’t want to run out tomorrow. It’s supposed to be warm and you’ll have lots of thirsty customers.”
Levi kept squeezing until the kitchen counter was piled with lemon skins. “My arms are too tired. I can’t do any more,” he complained. His mom agreed that he had done enough for one day, although the box was still half full. When she added sugar and water to Levi’s lemon juice, it made a total of two-and-a-half gallons of lemonade. They both took sips and declared it the best they had ever tasted.
Levi spent the rest of the night making signs for his stand and deciding he would charge $1 per cup. His mom drove to a nearby store and bought red plastic cups and bags of ice.
When he was supposed to be sleeping, Levi continued checking the clock in his bedroom. He left his bed at the first signs of daylight, which was the earliest he had ever voluntarily gotten up on a Saturday. He dragged a folding table and plastic chair to the edge of the sidewalk in front of his house. Then he grabbed a gallon jug of lemonade and his other supplies. The stand was ready for customers by 7:30 am.
“No one’s come by yet,” Levi told his mom when she emerged from the house to check on him.
“A lot of people are probably asleep. As it gets warmer, they’ll start walking and driving around.”
As she and Levi peered up and down the empty street, the neighbors on their left carried a table across their lawn and set it near the sidewalk. They decorated it with signs and then brought out cups and a pitcher of lemonade. A few minutes later, the neighbors on the right did the same thing.
“What’s going on?” Levi’s mom asked him. “The kids next door aren’t in your class. Where did they get the idea for a stand? Who else got lemons?”
“The whole school.”
“The whole school? All 500 kids?”
By the end of Friday classes, every teacher at Springview Elementary had reached the same conclusion – send the lemons home with their students. And when confronted with a pile of lemons, most parents pushed their kids toward making lemonade. By mid-morning on Saturday, the neighborhoods served by the school had the highest concentration of lemonade stands per square mile in the history of the United States. Anyone unaffiliated with the school who walked or drove through one of its neighborhoods wondered if they were on a set for a lemonade-themed commercial.
With so many lemonade choices and comparatively few customers, competition was fierce. Prices dropped quickly. Levi changed his sign to read fifty-cents, then a quarter, and then free. Even when it was free, no one but his dad seemed to want a cup. The undrunk lemonade warmed up in the sun and the ice melted.
Around noon, Levi’s mom arrived with a sandwich and sympathetically sat next to him.
“This was a bad idea. I hate lemonade now,” Levi said in a bored, defeated voice.
“It wasn’t a bad idea. The timing was just off. But wait a little longer. I have a feeling you’ve got a big sale on the way.”
Levi’s mom left the pep talk and called her parents. She explained that they needed to drive over and buy some lemonade. They left immediately and picked their way through a bewildering gauntlet of lemonade stands. They found Levi slumped in his chair and looking distraught.
“How much for a cup?” his grandpa asked.
“You can have it for free.”
Grandpa and Grandma tasted the lemonade before Grandpa said, “That’s the best tasting stuff I’ve ever had. Were the lemons freshly squeezed?”
“Yes. I did it myself.”
“I see you’ve got almost a gallon left in that jug. How about I buy the rest from you? Would $20 be enough?”
“Sure! Do you want a jug, too, Grandma? I’ve got another one.”
“I think we’ll stick with just one for now.”
Throughout the lemonade-rich neighborhoods, most sales were to relatives. A lot of lemonade got dumped down sinks or pushed to the back of refrigerators. The Springview students may not have been able to articulate the principle of supply and demand, but they had a real-world example of how it worked.
When Levi wrote his paragraph for Mrs. Woo, he started this way: “When life gives you lemons, you better hope everyone else doesn’t get them too. If you make lemonade, you should have your grandpa come over.”
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