WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS...

Or, learn how to flog fruit and at least lob the losers!

Theolonius McTavish, a lemonade-stand sales rep at the tender age of five, a used car salesman at the testy age of 20, and now a paltry pie-maker just a tad too old to remember the darn recipe!

A quick glance at the phrase, “When life gives you lemons”, leaves a lot to be desired.

Actually, these five words have spawned more than 119,000 web pages devoted to this tarty topic.

So, if you’re looking for advice on what to do with your lemons, take heart and follow this abbreviated list of suggestions.

When life gives you lemons you should:

• Start your own unforgettable “lemonade experience”.
• Just shut up and eat your damn lemons.
• Do some research on them. (Sources all agree that lemons originated from somewhere in Asia; today, America claims to grow a quarter of the world’s supply, and California is said to be the biggest producer …no wonder they call it the “The Land of Posh n’ Pits”!)
• The Ethical Werewolf recommends that you throw them at Republicans!
• Stop snivelling and sell’em on eBay!
• Make something called “Visualade”.
• Donate them to a school food-drive, (someone's bound to pick them up).
• Make a battery out of them and harness electricity for pity’s sake!
• Go to a “limoncello factory” in Amalfi, Italy where they whip up lemon salads.
• Turn around and squirt it in the eye of your nemesis.
• Throw them through life’s windows (for those who have nothing else to do).
• Ask for a diet drink to put them in.
• Turn them into a profit just like Martha Stewart did!
• Become a lemonologist, (that way you can polish furniture with the oil).
• Remember that God loves the yellow ones as much as the little green ones, (but it might have helped if he’d also supplied the water, sugar, a few spare ice-cubes, a pitcher to mix it in, a spoon to stir it and of course a glass from which to sip it!)
• Jump on the optimist’s bandwagon by building resilience and forging your way to success in whatever you’re pursuing, (even if it doesn’t make you King of the Castle forever and ever or produce mounds of money like Rumplestiltskin!)
• Pick up a get-well or care package, (provided they still have them in stock).
• Make lemonade and be sure to share it with others, (just to let them know how much you care about the bitter things in life that seem to come with an unexpected cost attached).
• Call your husband to come home right away and then make lemon-colored frosting, (to decorate whatever you’ve got lying around in the fridge)!
• SMILE, return the lemons to the person who presented them to you, and then ask for the oranges that you requested in the first place!
• Switch to limes and try a mean margarita, chips and salsa! (Oh, and do bring along a pair of dancing shoes…no not your big brogues or steel-toed stilettos!)
• Get tipsy, (and just say no when the bartender inquires whether you want “bitters” with your brew or bubbly).
• Buy all your lemons at Sobey’s! (If you don’t have one in your neighborhood, contact them and find out when they plan on opening up a shop with lemons in your neck of the woods!)
• Have another root beer, (and maybe lemons will make you burp less!)
• Pucker up! (Or at least show them who has Pucker Power in your family!)
• Use a gadget called a “zester”, (to remove lemon peels what else?)
• Of course, if you fancy yourself a bit of a wizard…you can always use your abracadabra skills to make orange juice!
• Smash them with a heavy KB and hope for the best, (according to a dedicated dragon door strength conditioning martial arts expert).
• Say “****-off” and go to bed! (For those with short attention spans and few alternative-dispute resolution mechanisms to deal with difficult dilemmas or dorks of course).
• Go shopping with a valid credit card! (And avoid yellow...it's not your color!)
• Sue - it makes lawyers rich and leave schmucks like you with a sour taste in your mouth! (So quit complaining and invest your money in sugar; even if your all teeth fall out, your taste buds will be happy.)
• Find a politician and a lawyer who want to perform a “public service”; then ask them to draft and enact a “computer lemon law” entitling consumers to timely replacement of their personal computers if manufacturers can’t fix them and requires manufacturers to pay claimants’ legal fees as well as any expenses incurred in resolving their claims. (Isn't this is a great opportunity to turn the tables on flashy floggers of faulty fruit?)
• When all else fails suck them, (recommended by someone calling himself “A Digital Dude who loves lemons").
• Never forget to get your daily dose of cold, refreshing lemon juice, (it's full of vitamin C according to a healthy food fare lady).
• Be quiet and eat your lemons, (just like grown-ups do who have no other way of proving their courage, fortitude and mastery of the basic food groups.)
• Make “Snickers” because they taste a whole lot better than lemonade, (a recommendation from a grade two student in Miss Plum’s class).
• Eat more gelato, (from a contributor named “Quark” in the Wordlab Forum).
• Say thank you and run, (from an anonymous online bulletin board contributor).
• Just add some vodka and have a party, (definitely not submitted by a party-pooper!)
• Watch a Frogcatcher Film titled, "When Life Gives You Lemons", that parodies the world of unemployed white-collar workers (...who better than a few loafers to tell a lemon-aid story!)
• Ask yourself what Eeyore would have done to resolve this muss of a mess ...after all didn't he say, "They're funny things, Accidents. You never have them till you're having them".
• And if all else fails, try reading the twelfth volume in "A Series of Unfortunate Events" by Lemony Snicket, a hermit and a nomad who wishes everyone nothing but the best, (after spending an inordinate amount of time investigating and reporting upon woeful things that most people are better off without).

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For an appreciation of some tarty tidbits take a peek at Anne Taintor's work: http://www.fly-bird.net/products/mlbc-094.htm

No individual should be without the bothersome if not clearly biased books by one loopy loud-mouthed fellow named Lemony Snicket http://www.lemonysnicket.com/index.cfm