When Life Gives You Lemons…

“Tomorrow: going to the [Cedar Rapids, IA] Farmer’s Market, wearing a shirt that says “Life” on it, and handing out lemons to people.”

I posted that status to Twitter and Facebook yesterday morning. Guessing 90% of the people reading it thought I was kidding.¹ But at about 10pm last night, I wandered into Walmart, snagged a plain t-shirt, some spray paint, a duffel bag, and 100² lemons. 100 lemons look awfully weird when they’re the only thing in a cart. Got them loaded into the duffel bag³, and got the t-shirt spray painted.

What was initially intended as a kind gesture turned into a mini-social experiment. The following are a bunch of notes from today, on a wide range of subjects.

• There was concern from friends of mine that I would be kicked out of the market, or at least asked to stop, since I wasn’t registered or might be “competing”. Since no one was selling lemons, and I never interfered with anyone that was looking at goods at a booth, I never had any issues.
• The first person that took a lemon was a middle aged woman there with some of her friends. She was all “OH MY GOODNESS!!!! I was going to make sangrias this afternoon, and these will be PERFECT!!!” She ended off taking 6 lemons right off the bat, which made me feel great.
• About 75% asked did not want a lemon.
• About 90% of those that DID take a lemon inquired as to my purpose for handing these out. “What organization is this?”, “What’s ‘life’?”⁴, and “What’s the catch?” were very common.
• People who were just standing around were just as likely to take a lemon as those walking along.
• Groups of only men took a lemon only 1 time that I can recall (though they were admittedly rare).
• Groups of only women took lots of lemons. Ladies love lemons.
• Older women (we’re talking 70+ here) LOVE being called “ladies”.
• Mixed groups were hit and miss.
• Groups of 4 or more had the best rate of taking lemons. One person would get confident and take one, and others would be like “well, ok”.
• Not a single person with a small child took a lemon.
• The “sales” pitch that worked the best was “Life is handing out lemons today. Would you like one?”
• The best responses of the whole day were from the vendors themselves. I got a breakfast burrito, 3 bottles of water, and a donut for free from various tents throughout the morning. To any of them reading this: thank you very much.
• A bunch of people requested pictures. Apparently, it was greatly amusing to many people.
• It took me 3.5 hours to hand out all 100 lemons.

All in all, it was a great experience and a lot of fun. If I brightened even one person’s day/week/month/year, then I deem the entire adventure a success. I’d totally do this again.

UPDATE: One of the workers that got a photo taken with me contacted me through email. I got her permission to post her message and photo below.

After a rather frustrating few months (and especially this past week) where I had quite literally quoted that saying ["when life gives you lemons…"] multiple times, I found it both ironic and appropriate that “Life” was walking around literally handing out lemons. After receiving my first one, and you had gone on your way, I regretted not getting a photo of something I found so ironic and yet appropriate. So when you came around again, I got this picture. So I’d say you can count that little adventure to be a success, as it definitely made my day. I wanted to say Thank You for being willing to step out of your box and do something a little odd (and yet entirely awesome) to put a smile on a stranger’s faces.

Paula

p.s. I still have not figured out quite what to do with my lemons yet…

1. I’ll be honest, I kinda was at the time. ↩
2. Actually, 106, but who’s counting. ↩
3. I severely underestimated how heavy 100 lemons in a bag would be. My shoulder kills. ↩
4. Apparently they thought Life was an organization or something ↩