Yesterday I went by a kid with a lemonade stand, except I think it was an iced tea stand judging by the color of the contents of his Tupperware pitcher. I quietly thought to myself: wow, that’s me fifty years ago.
Until I change it, the heading on my front pages says “Cardboard Lemonade Stand”, which was not chosen idly. Cardboard refers to my relative impermanence (economically), and Lemonade Stand refers to a summer I once had in a former life AND a guy’s lemonade stand at a local county fair (which is too long a story to go into here; if, however, you happen to be Bill Morton and are reading here: at my store, it’s “still a buck”).
The wide-eyed kid looked hot. He was sitting directly in the mid-afternoon sun and I noticed he wasn’t swamped by his business. His plastic pitcher was full. I had a couple of actual dollars (somewhat rare) and momentarily thought I should stop but I was pressing the Post Office deadline and my business is probably more important than the kid’s, so I made a mental note to stop on the way back.
Support budding entrepreneurs, etc. Independence.
The PO was a little slow and when I hopped into my twenty-five dollar van I thought to myself well, I’ll buy the kid an iced tea too.
Trouble was, by the time I drove the three blocks, the kid was just finishing packing it in. He was handing the pitcher to his mom. Nothing hurt, I thought-they can still drink the tea, I’ve got a couple of dollars for those horrible little cigars I’ve been smoking, the inconvenience store guy will be just as good for conversation as the kid would have been (which proved to be true because NOW the inconvenience store guy has to card everybody every time when he sells the horrible little cigars).
The kid missed out though, and he’ll have to postpone his first economic lesson. If you’re going to sit wide-eyed in the sun hoping for someone to come along and buy two of something, you’ve got to sit there longer than you originally imagined.
You might have to endure stuff like hackers and spammers and Thing-switching customers who loudly return stuff knowing full well it’s wrong.
It might rain. Tree branches might fall “at” you.
Mom might say “give me that tea back, it’s more valuable in my own refrigerator”.
By the time I got up today I’d made the price of the horrible little cigars back and another two-dollars and something-or-other peddling my own stash of rescued Things and some other guy’s talking clock about which I know nothing.
I happen to really like The Future, and at my age I suspect I’m supposed to resent it already but there’s one thing about it that’s a certainty:
You Must Wait For It.