Terry Savage loses it over little girls, and lemonade.


 This is one of things you think is funny at first, then realize the true sadness of it.  Terry Savage is a columnist for the Chicago Sun Times.  I've only read one of his articles, an excerpt of which follows. It was enough.  I tried to do a little research on him, but the only Terry Savage I could find was a Libertarian candidate for the California legislature in 1995 (ended up with 14% of the vote).  Perhaps they are one in the same.

Mr. Savage, his brother, and his brother's fiancée were driving on July 4th, when they came upon three little girls at a lemonade stand.

...The three young girls -- under the watchful eye of a nanny, sitting on the grass with them -- explained that they had regular lemonade, raspberry lemonade, and small chocolate candy bars.

Then my brother asked how much each item cost.

"Oh, no," they replied in unison, "they're all free!"

I sat in the back seat in shock. Free? My brother questioned them again: "But you have to charge something? What should I pay for a lemonade? I'm really thirsty!"

His fiancée smiled and commented, "Isn't that cute. They have the spirit of giving."

That really set me off, as my regular readers can imagine.

"No!" I exclaimed from the back seat. "That's not the spirit of giving. You can only really give when you give something you own. They're giving away their parents' things -- the lemonade, cups, candy. It's not theirs to give."
 I'm surprised he didn't call the cops, or better, try to make a citizen's arrest.  That would teach those little felons a lesson.

First of all, (as if this is important) if there was a nanny present, that implies adult supervision (which is prudent).  Being an adult, she would have notified the crime victims parents of the girls' intent, if the girls had not already done so, which is likely.

Secondly...IT'S FUCKING LEMONADE!

Seriously.  Is this is what we're gravitating toward?  A world run by bean-counters and actuaries, where every labor is accounted for and every motive questioned?  Hoarders who live in fear that what they have will somehow be taken from them by the scary minority of the week.  These are people who find the very concepts of kindness, tolerance, sacrifice, or even common courtesy abhorrent.

Really, It's not about lemonade.

The tragedy is that Mr. Savage has made it to adulthood without learning that there are some things in this life that can't be measured.

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