“The Lemon”
A micro memoir by Evan Thacker (9).
Pulp and juice from the lemon flew in every direction like a grenade exploding. The sweet spot sleeve on the plastic bat was marked with the outline of the lemon. The tangy smell of citrus lingered throughout the air. I smirked and let out a chuckle as I turned back around at my cousin Grant. Tears began to fill his eyes and the smirk on my face quickly changed as he started to weep. “Grant it was just a stupid lemon!” I yelled across the yard as he ran off to the sliding door of my Grandma’s house.
Just earlier I had found a moldy old lemon on the ground and decided to soft toss it to myself and hit it with a baseball bat. My slightly younger cousin Grant, and I both got a good laugh out of seeing the bits and pieces of the lemon go flying across my Grandma’s backyard. I went on and hit another dead lemon but Grant didn’t laugh like he had done the first time. I could tell by the nervous look on his face that he was worried our Grandma wouldn't approve of our “fun and games”. Grant feared the harsh scoldings of our Grandmother, which he had gotten more often than any of our cousins. As he anxiously looked around to make sure our Grandma wasn’t near, I found a warped lemon on the ground; however Grant didn’t see this and assumed I had picked the lemon off the tree. He frantically kept saying, “No. You can’t hit it, Grandma will be upset. She’s gonna use those lemons!” I disregarded his comments and threw the lemon in the air to hit with the bat. Grant then jumped in front of me, causing me to pull my swing away, and caught the lemon out of the air. Frustration between us arose and I demanded the lemon back, but he refused. “The lemon is all mangled up, she’s not going to use it,” I said.
“Yes she will,” Grant replied.
“No. She. Won’t,” I strictly said back. We glared at each other for a couple of seconds until I quickly grabbed for the lemon, trying to catch him off guard. He pulled his hands away in time but that didn’t stop me from grabbing hold of him and taking him to the ground where we wrestled for control of the lemon. Grant put up a good tussle but I came out on top with the lemon in my hand. I dashed free of him and wacked the lemon with my bat. Grant broke down in frustration and defeat while I stood victoriously with the bat on my shoulder. After running inside the house in tears, our Grandma and parents came outside frustrated at me and asked what I had done. Things ended up figuring themselves out without myself or my cousin getting in trouble but thinking back to the memory of him running away in tears fills me with guilt. Being the bigger person in this situation would have been best, even if it cost me to not get what I wanted. Letting Grant just have the lemon could have prevented our conflit. Now whenever I see that lemon tree in my grandma’s backyard, I think back to the foolish incident between my cousin Grant and I.