Orange Juice

    I wrote this while having a conversation with my children at breakfast. Sometimes our children are the best story tellers...

One day in a small blue house on a small gray road, lived a boy and his parents.  They had a dog and a cat and a swimming pool too.

The boy asked his mother, “Can I have an orange?”

“Yes, my child.” she said with a smile.

He peeled and peeled till the orange was ready. The boy asked, “Can I make juice?”

“Sure.” said his mother smiling once again. She got him a pitcher and a bowl and told him to squeeze. His little hand clutched tightly around the orange the juice dripped down and around his fingers into the bowl. 

Then the boy asked his mother,

“What if I had a thousand oranges all peeled in a swimming pool, and I was barefoot and I jumped in and squished them all and then it was a big pool of orange juice that I could swim in every day?”

“Well my son I guess you’d have to have a really long straw to drink out of then.“ The mother replied.

“So what if I got a hundred chickens that laid eggs every day and I would make breakfast for everyone in the world every Sunday?” The boy said.

“Well you would certainly have enough orange juice for all of them to drink.” The mother added.

“Yeah, but then where would I swim?” The boy asked.

“Swim? Silly boy where would you keep all your chickens?

“In daddy’s garage” The boy said.

“In the garage? Where would Daddy park the trucks?” The mother asked.

“I don’t know, in the yard.” The boy looked confused.

“So where would all the people wait for the breakfast?” The mother asked her son.

“They would line up all down the street and you can bring them out there food to the pool where they would be eating. They would all have big long straws to drink up the juice and it wouldn’t cost them any money so they will come back every week.”

“Oh I see.” His mother said trying not to chuckle.

The mother and son were on their forth orange and the bottom of the pitcher was barely full. The boy was very tired of squeezing the oranges.

He said to his mother with disappointment, “Mother, I don’t want to squeeze any more oranges for this juice. I guess the pool isn’t going to work and the chickens will probably have to eat a lot too, and if the trucks were in the yard where would I play? This was a bad Idea mother.”

“You are probably right about the pool, the chickens and the yard but it’s always fun to imagine things isn’t it?” The mother said to the boy.

“Yes mother, but it’s hard to make orange juice.”

“Yup it sure is.” Said his mother.