I've always wondered about that expression - "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." Hmmm. Lemonade is delicious. So are lemon bars, lemon torte, lemon meringue pie, lemon chicken, lemon pudding and lemon drops.At the risk of sounding like Bubba in the movie Forrest Gump, there are literally hundreds of things you can make with lemons that are mouth watering. So what's the problem? The Barefoot Contessa can make a thousand tasty treats out of a lemon. Martha Stewart can show you how to decorate your home with them. And don't get me started on what you can find on Pinterest.
It seems to me that if you really wanted to make the point that even when life is tough - you have to make the best of it, I think we need to use something else.
The origin of that expression dates back to an obituary in 1915 for a dwarf that by all accounts made the most of his life and rose above the challenges that life threw at him. "He picked up the lemons that Fate had sent him and started a lemonade-stand," they wrote about him. Dale Carnegie later adopted the idea in his 1948 book "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living" with his Rule #6: "When fate hands us a lemon, let's try to make a lemonade."
But if someone threw lemons at me, I'd snatch them up. My daughter LOVES lemons. She bites right into one with a smile. She can't be the only one. Where is the lemon lobby? Where are the citrus growers? How about the Vitamin C Council?
On behalf of all the lemon lovers out there, I think we need a new scapegoat. (The goat lobby is going to have to wait for my next campaign.) The proverbial phrase only works if the object is something that we all agree isn't delicious to begin with.
So I have a new suggestion: stinkbugs. You know, those pesky little creatures that crawl into your homes in the middle of the night like the stuff of your nightmares, and then multiply. And then they start to appear literally everywhere. And to make matters worse, when you go near them they emit this odor that, well, let's just say, stinks.
I do hereby propose: When life gives you stinkbugs, make perfume. Now THAT is a challenge.
