The Lemonade Stand: Feminist and Other Reflections on the Limited Liability of Corporate Shareholders

The sultriness that was summer in D.C. blanketed the pedestrians returning to Capitol Hill. Trickling toward home through air that passively resisted, I almost overlooked a shape emerging from the haze of my own street. It might have been some atmospherically-induced apparition; rather, there, in the 1990s, in front of a well-kept urban rowhouse with door adorned by yuppie wreath, sat an immaculate child, seraphically presiding over a linen-covered table bearing a pitcher made of Tupperware. His neatly lettered sign, presumably prepared by an invisible caregiver in endorsement of his enterprise, read "Lemonade - 50 Cents." The little boy with the pitcher became a fixture of late August.

Each business day, he held his post from four to six p.m. Although I never patronized his stand, I watched others who did. He seemed quite pleased as each quarter clinked into his pocket, and he never failed to thank each customer and to suggest a repeat transaction. There may be some romantic explanation for the young merchant's dedication. He might, after all, have been contributing to a shortfall in the family mortgage payment consequent to the recession that rippled across the Washington legal community-in this scenario, the briefcases and well-tailored suits sported by both his parents might just have been a brave front.

He might have been saving for a life-preserving operation for a younger sister (who, to the best of my knowledge, did not exist).