A Lemony Story

I wish I had taken a picture of the beautiful lemons our daughter brought to us from my cousin's house. Almost as large as grapefruit, their unblemished, bright yellow brought sunshine to my gray and brown kitchen. I picked one of the lemons up and rolled it back and forth under my palm against the counter. I held it up to my nose and took a deep breath. Visions of lemon bars, cookies, curd, pie, and lemonade swirled through my head to the chorus of that old Peter, Paul and Mary song - Lemon Tree. You know, the one they swiped for the Pledge commercial - oh wait - you'd have to be my age to be able to remember all that. Anyway, despite what the song claims, the lemon is quite edible. You just have to sweeten it up a little, or a lot, depending on the type of lemon you have.

I noticed these lemons were getting soft and needed to be juiced as soon as possible. Still in recovery mode from a bout of stomach flu, I decided to go ahead and juice the fruit and store it in a used apple juice bottle in the refrigerator until I could get to the store for freezer bags. I also had a couple of ice cube trays I could fill. A single ice cube uses right about 2 tablespoons of juice, so that makes a handy way to have just the right amount available at a moments notice. Those three dozen or so lemons gave me enough juice to fill the gallon bottle and both ice trays, with just enough left over to make a gallon of lemonade for the guys at my house. I used my cute Pampered Chef star pitcher for the lemonade and I used a sharpie to label the bottle: "Lemon Juice." I even drew a picture of a glass and made one of those circle symbols with a line through it - the universal symbol for "Do Not" do whatever is in the picture.

All of that work wiped me out. When my dear hubby got home from work we said the blessing on dinner and I went upstairs to lie down. Moments later I heard,

"Why did you draw something on this bottle? What is it?"

A rush of adrenaline boosted me off the bed and I ran down the stairs as I hollered, "Don't drink it! That's the lemon juice, not the lemonade."

Our seventeen-year-old son snickered at his father's confusion. "Mom! You totally ruined it! I was going to let him drink it and take a picture of his face and send it to Grandma."

Poor hubby stared at the bottle in his hands. "You told me there was lemonade in the fridge. This is lemonade." He started to twist off the cap.

"No, this is the lemonade." I opened the refrigerator, grabbed the pitcher, and held it out.

"Mom, it would have been perfect. Just like story of when Grandma watched Dad drink the lemon juice from her fridge just to see what he would do. I wanted to see his reaction!"

What is that saying about history repeating itself? I guess prankster genes can be inherited - because the lemon doesn't fall far from the tree...or something like that.

This incident was funny to me because of the story behind it. My husband cannot stand sour anything. It makes him shudder. My mother-in-law knew that and the story about her prank is famous in our family. Now I have another scene to connect to it as I write our family history.

What kind of inside jokes do you have in your family? What makes them funny?

hugs~