Sticky note here, lemon there. Everywhere my friend Abi and I went, we left something in our wake. Our "life" shirts referencing the lemons in our hands. One girl at the pizza shop gets it, chuckles, and has fun quizzing her coworkers as Abi and I eat our French Fries. We leave, a few smiles shared that light up our day. We leave a lemon on a sidewalk, and one in the hands of a statue. Both have an attached note asking "what will YOU do?" Our whole day is dedicated to sharing smiles, making people happy.
Abi and I had decided that the world needed to be a happier place, and how better than to give out lemons? It was a Saturday afternoon, and we had just been talking about how to give back to the community. She lives in Plymouth NH, which is a relatively nice college town. Our day had consisted of procrastinating doing homework, and watching Doctor Who. While being stereotypical teenagers, and looking through Facebook we had come across a picture of a guy with a name tag that said “Life” who was supposedly handing out lemons. Of course, both of us got super excited because it would be fun.
Abi dragged out her fabric spray paint, and stencils, while I searched her closet for white t-shirts. Ten minutes later, we were heading out with t-shirts that said, “Life” and lemons. As we walked down the street, we agreed to wait until someone got our reference. Our goal was to leave at least one person with a smile, we wanted to leave behind a street full. We were wandering around, and no one was getting the reference. Disappointed, but determined, we walked into a pizza shop. Surprisingly, we didn’t know the girl behind the counter.Plymouth is small, and we were in that shop almost every weekend. She might of been new, but the fact that we didn’t know her made the smile we shared even better. She was looking at our shirts as we waited on our large order of French Fries, and asks, “Are you supposed to be when life hands you lemons?” We got so excited that someone got it that we actually dropped our lemons. We got our French Fries, and sat near the counter so that the girl could quiz her coworkers. We left with all five of the people smiling.
After another hour of fruitless walking, Abi suggested leaving the lemons with a note saying, “What will you do? -From Life”. A short walk and 5 dollars later, we had sticky notes and a gold pen. We left one of the lemon-note pairs in the sidewalk and another in teh hands, literally, of a boy scout statue. Sitting under a tree, we waited with a bag of peppermint patties to keep us amused. The first lady to see it was very disappointing.
“Stupid kids” Was her actual response to the note. Abi and I looked at each other and barely contained our amusement. As the minutes dragged into one another, we became bored. We still had lemons, and sticky notes, and no one was looking at our other ones. Here is where we made a what I think was our one mistake. We put a lemon-note on a car’s windshield wiper. To this day we have no idea if the person saw it, or what happened because they drove off while we weren’t watching. People gradually began to notice, and the few smiles that we saw made everything worth it. It was one Saturday very well spent.
