If your kid has a summer lemonade stand, read this

“Glad this worked out in the end, and didn't turn into a nationwide "sour lemon" like those kids that baked cookies a few months ago and were hit with a lawsuit by a neighbor.

http://robots.cnn.com/2005/US/08/04/lemonade.stand.ap/index.html”

“i heard this on NPR and laughed”

“People can be such dicks!”

“Just put yourself in that guys shoes... remember, that's how he makes a living.”

“Silly man. Selling lemonade with a sausage sandwich. Everybody knows beer goes with a sausage sandwich. Duh!!”

“Can't say I blame him.”

“what would jesus do?”

“start a kool-aide stand.

no

wait

that's jim, not jesus”

“What is the world coming too? I hate people.”

“Years ago, when we were having a yard sale, we let the kids sell lemonade during the sale, and, it being a hot day, they made a tidy sum.”

“If you watch much television, you've probably heard of a product called Mike's Hard Lemonade.

And if you ask Christopher Ratte and his wife how they lost custody of their 7-year-old son, the short version is that nobody in the Ratte family watches much television.

The way police and child protection workers figure it, Ratte should have known that what a Comerica Park vendor handed over when Ratte ordered a lemonade for his boy three Saturdays ago contained alcohol, and Ratte's ignorance justified placing young Leo in foster care until his dad got up to speed on the commercial beverage industry.

Even if, in hindsight, that decision seems a bit, um, idiotic.

Ratte is a tenured professor of classical archaeology at the University of Michigan, which means that, on a given day, he's more likely to be excavating ancient burial sites in Turkey than watching "Dancing with the Stars" -- or even the History Channel, for that matter.

The 47-year-old academic says he wasn't even aware alcoholic lemonade existed when he and Leo stopped at a concession stand on the way to their seats in Section 114.

"I'd never drunk it, never purchased it, never heard of it," Ratte of Ann Arbor told me sheepishly last week. "And it's certainly not what I expected when I ordered a lemonade for my 7-year-old."

But it wasn't until the top of the ninth inning that a Comerica Park security guard noticed the bottle in young Leo's hand.

"You know this is an alcoholic beverage?" the guard asked the professor.

"You've got to be kidding," Ratte replied. He asked for the bottle, but the security guard snatched it before Ratte could examine the label.

An hour later, Ratte was being interviewed by a Detroit police officer at Children's Hospital, where a physician at the Comerica Park clinic had dispatched Leo -- by ambulance! -- after a cursory exam.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080428/COL04/804280375”

“That's a long way from Toby Tyler's water with a few slices of lemon floating in it.”

“If life deals you lemons, why not go kill someone with the lemons
(maybe by shoving them down his throat).

~Jack Handy”

“The way I see it, many people dropped the ball on this one.

1) The person(s) who sold the drink to him and then said nothing when he proceeded to hand it to his KID...

2) The people who sat around him for 8, (yes, 8(!!!)) innings who said NOTHING to him!

Sadly, this also reinforces the fact that just because a person is academically book smart, it doesn't mean that they are socially well-adjusted or "street smart"....

The father must not be a big drinker-- (although he was drinking a beer himself) to have not known about Mike's Hard Lemonade--it's not packaged in a bottle much different from a glass pop bottle of Jone's soda, for instance...

As a PROFESSOR, it's obvious he has his head buried in the books, and not in popular culture. However, he may want to re-examine his knowledge of popular culture before his kid reaches junior high / high school age and begins to venture into the area of drugs and alcohol... (say what you will, we know that kids get into it much earlier than adults think.) Just think of all of the mischief his son can get into because daddy and mommy haven't kept tabs on what's going on in popular culture....

"What's that you have there, son?"

"Oh, nothing, dad, just some vitamins, herbal tea and pop--I'm really trying to be health-conscious...."

"Okay, have fun at the study group tonight!"

Will he forgive himself if his son calls him from jail (or worse, the hospital) because of his (dad's) lack of knowledge regarding drugs & alcohol? This should be a lesson to him--he needs to take his head out of the books a little and he may need to study the archeology of the cultures currently around him vs. only living in the cultures of people long gone!!!

**** Edit:

I do, however think that some people in the system may have over-reacted to the situation, though--The article talks about them measuring the kid's Blood Alcohol level and that he did not show signs of the alcohol--so the kid didn't actually knock down a few bottles of the stuff...

What further trauma was caused by taking the kid away from his parents?!
last edited: 4/29/08 8:20:55 AM”

“the fact that the lemonaid was 5+ dollars more than other "soft" drinks should have rang all kinda bells.”

“Opie, $4 for a bag of peanuts and $3 for a bottle of water is also expensive and way more than you'd pay at a drug store, but most people expect to pay more at a venue such as a ball park...”

“lemonade is often more expensive than soft drinks. I bet the dude was just plain shocked at the prices in general. Modern sporting events have freakish prices”

“The sign at the vendor's stand simply read "Mike's Lemonade".



I think it is reasonable to assume a concession stand at a stadium would have family fare. How many times have you just handed something to your kid thinking you knew what it was and found out you missed something. I suspect somebody got up on the wrong side of the bed or there is more to the story that isn't being reported. If the kid was showing obvious signs of being drunk I could see one level of intervention. If the kid was showing obvious signs of alcohol poisoning then a trip to the hospital is definitely in order. But the guard seems to have overreacted by the way the story is reported.

Edit:
Once a report is made to the hospital of potential abuse they have no choice but to involve CPS who has little choice but to remove the child from custody until such time as the situation can be resolved. Once the kid left the park by ambulance it was all over but the details.
last edited: 4/29/08 8:32:45 AM”

“"It's For The Children"”

“the system is designed to protect children from harm. removing the child from his parents and putting him in foster care has done far more damage to the kid than the his accidentally getting a bottle of hard lemonade. these busy-body police need to spend their time going after REALLY ABUSED kids and not tearing children away from good families. terrible.”

“It's a great example of the typical government program, either there's no reaction whatsoever, or severe over-reaction. There's never middle ground. Hopefully the kid didn't spend too much time away from mom and dad.

There is a lesson here: Don't waste your time and money at baseball games!”

“There is a lesson here: Don't waste your time and money at baseball games!”
naked ape
1:01:38 PM
5/01/08

But what if you're having trouble sleeping?”

“Zac that's whur Mike's Lemonade comes in. Or 3 if you want out quick.”