The Quarterly Grain Report

Life's Generosities

When life hands you lemons, as the saying goes, make lemonade. But does the saying take into account that some of us may not have the additional ingredients necessary to complete the parable? No. So unless life is generous enough to hand everyone sugar, water, a pitcher, a wooden spoon, and the knowledge to concoct the said mixture, he who has received only lemons is left both slightly confused, and to his own creative devices.

If he who has received the unexpected gift of citrus is unfamiliar with the life/lemons commandment, he might just use them for some purpose that life might not approve of, such as lacing the gloves of a mixed martial-arts combatant with citric acid, ensuring additional irritation to wounds inflicted on his opponent.

Now, I know what some of you may be saying to yourselves: It's not meant to be taken literally; life never hands actual lemons; it places people into fortuitous circumstances that they must take into their own hands to further improve.

But what if life stops handing out sets of beneficial circumstances? What if instead of inspirational lemons, life starts handing out nothing but dirty plums that all have three or four big dents in them? Are we to still take this free fruit as a sign of improving circumstances? Or are we to make of it what it really is, regardless of whatever parable we were taught by our overbearing, depression-era grandmothers? If life starts handing out dirty plums to citizens of this great country, should we just continue smiling and attempt to create a drink out of whatever shit we stepped into that day? I for one, will not.

Lemons don't seem like the best fruit to use in a saying about good fortune anyway, so can we not stumble onto some sort of fruit that can be enjoyed by itself? Like a delicious peach? Or a fig?

If there ever comes a time when the values of society slowly evolve to the point where lemons are cast in a bad-luck shadow, will the lemon parable continue to exist as a lesson in worsening an already bad situation? If life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. I'm not sure, but by this time society will undoubtedly have created a whole new set of lessons with sayings along the lines of If life ever drops some bird duke on your shoulder, don't wipe it off. That will only smear it and spread it out. Just wait for it to harden and you will probably be able to chip it off in a few clean pieces.

Whatever the case, if Mark gets hit by a bus, no amount of dirty plum-ade is going to salvage the remainder of the day. The fact remains that Mark still got run over by a huge mass-transit conveyance, and to top it off, was later forced to consume some sort of horrible-tasting fruit punch that must've been way past the expiration date, just so the glass-half-full people in the room could rest a little easier that night, knowing that even though he got pummeled by the gigantic Greyhound bus of life, Mark made the most of the situation.

posted by Arthur Croft Yates @ 2:33 PM