Aging Gracefully

Daily Post:  Not Lemonade – When life gives you lemons… make something else. Tell us about a time you used an object or resolved a tricky situation in an unorthodox way.

If you’re going to throw life’s lemons at an alligator it helps if you live in southwest Florida and have citrus trees in your backyard overlooking a canal or other body of water.

Life has recently handed me a bushel of lemons and I have been feeling angry, hurt, frustrated and all those other awful negatives.  I was in my backyard miserably picking up the fallen lemons and oranges that were beginning to rot on the lawn.  In a fit of pique, I threw a lemon at the trunk of a large pine tree on the bank of the canal.  It felt so good when it splatted that I hurled several more that either satisfactorily splattered or missed completely and splashed in the canal.

When one particularly hefty lemon hit the water, I heard screams of delight from my granddaughter who was down on the dock feeding bread to the turtles and ducks. “Grammy, that lemon almost hit the head of the alligator!”  Alligator?  Holy crap!  I ran down to the dock and found a 3-foot baby alligator in among the turtles probably wondering why everyone else in the water was getting so excited about the frozen, stale hotdog buns and garlic bread Rebekah was throwing to them.

After showing her how to make spitbablls from the bread, I took my granddaughter back up the bank and gave her a pile of lemons to try to throw at the trunks of the trees.  Then we tried throwing them into the water between the trees.  While pitching the fruit I explained one of  life’s lessons —  that sometimes when you’re really angry or frustrated and want to throw things, it’s best to throw things that won’t break or hurt anyone else.  Things that splat or splash are good,  especially if you’re cleaning up the backyard at the same time.

“Can I throw some lemons at the alligator?”  Knowing that it was highly unlikely that she would hit it and suddenly feeling much better and happier, we gathered a bunch of half-rotten lemons and went back down to the dock.  Sure enough, there was the baby alligator about 10 feet from the dock just floating and minding its own business.  Bekah let fly and the splash startled the alligator.  With a look of contempt, it headed to the opposite shore.  We laughed and threw the rest of the fruit at floating leaves and twigs.

Rebekah asked me where the mama alligator lived.  Oh yeah.  Beating a hasty retreat up the bank I figured we’d wait for life to hand me coconuts before tackling mama alligator.