Zoe on "Lemon"ade

Warm welcome to guest-writer Zoe Maddalena. I'm her daddy, and if it isn't glaringly obvious in about a minute ... she is her daddy's daughter.


Last Sunday my youth group was holding a hot dog/chili fund-raiser for a mission trip. But that's beside the point. The point is, my job was to make lemonade.

Not "life gives you lemons" lemonade, not sugar-and-fruit-of-the-citrus-persuasion lemonade, but powdered lemonade. Country Home, or something like that. It looked like highlighter and sand, and smelled like detergent. Mixed with five gallons of water, it didn't take on that translucent effect that actual lemons might give it: it was milky opaque.

Back to the story.

I was given a great big cooler that had been sitting in storage for about a year, so it was pretty dusty crusty dirty. So I hauled it into the dusty crusty dirty kitchenette, dumped it in the dusty crusty rusty sink and hosed it down and went on the hunt for some dish soap. I found some Dawn, or Joy, or something cheerful and bright and clean-y. So I cleaned it out and made the hungry masses some "lemonade."

But there was one thing that I noticed that I can't get out of my head. The Dawn dish soap was proudly labeled, "Made with REAL LEMON JUICE!"

I don't think there was any of that in the actual lemonade.