“The Lemonade Stand” is a fiction article written by Elizabeth Wing of Kentfield, California. The piece is about a little girl named Clemie who has set up a lemonade stand, but does not receive any customers. After a man in a flannel red shirt hides under her stand, she tells the cops she hadn’t seen him. They talk, and Clemie only sees the good in him, as well as his painting and his enlightenment way back in college. When she leaves the stand for a minute, her rag doll, Hana, asks the Flannel Man to teach Clemie a lesson that not everything can be good and tells him to choke her, but just for a little. In the end, Clemie and the Flannel Man burn the rag doll, to get rid of the bad, and just see the good. This piece is both positive and negative in terms of always seeing the good in life, or blinding yourself with the good to protect yourself, to remain innocent, respectively. Only seeing the good makes one very objective and optimistic, but not seeing the bad may make one ignorant and unaware. Seeing both is the balance, the correct in-between, dare I say.
I personally enjoyed the piece very much because it made me think, yet at the same time showed me that there must be a balance, it didn’t just tell me. The characters were chosen very well, so that the reader is engulfed immediately, yet the piece leaves the reader wondering about the fate of the characters in the end. It is interesting and exciting yet good as a moral. One of my favorite lines in this piece was, “‘When I woke, the fever had subsided, and the next afternoon I felt good enough to paint again. But I didn’t paint another landscape—I painted my dream, and it was perfect.’” This line really told me that whatever happens doesn’t have to be exactly as you want it to be, or what you intended it to be. It can be anything, and a dream isn’t any less valid than a concrete technique. This piece was something out of my comfort zone, but in a good, learning kind of way. This piece was neutral, interesting and one that I truly loved, I say.