“Problem, solved…”

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Shared by Breanne Smedley

“Problem, solved…”

Have you ever wanted something so bad, you would do just about anything to get it?

That’s how my sister and I felt the summer of 1998.

We were shopping with my mom when we saw it. Assembled and displayed above one of the aisles at Costco.

A 15-foot outdoor trampoline.

The moment we saw it, we had to have it. It became all we talked about.

Images of flying through the sky while flipping and twisting filled our minds.

It soon became an obsession.

We put together a compelling enough argument to convince my parents that we could add this giant structure to our backyard.

The problem? It was $200. And my parents weren’t paying for it.

Looking back, I wonder now if that was a brilliant strategy on my parent's part.

“Sure, you can get the trampoline!” (Good luck paying for it though…).

At 7 and 9 years old, my sister and I pooled together what money we had.

A random assortment of crumpled bills and coins left us with about $5.

Only $195 to go!

“We could see if our parents would pay us to do extra chores or yard work,” we thought.

But we knew we were going to need a little more umph than that. There are only so many weeds to pull…

That summer, some homes in our neighborhood were featured in the Parade of Homes. This resulted in a lot of extra traffic driving through, right past our house.

We need to capitalize on this! What would all these people want on a hot summer day?

A good old fashioned lemonade stand. That’s what we’ll do!

So, we did. We took out a loan from our parents to purchase the cups, lids, straws, and supplies to make the lemonade.

And for two weeks straight, as car upon car drove past our house to get to the parade of homes, we sat at the end of our driveway.

We had a large sign, fresh, cool lemonade, and two smiling faces.

Irresistible to the families driving by.

At one point, we even decided to scale a bit.

Only $0.25 more for a large and a fresh lemon slice!

After all, was said and done, and we paid our parents back for materials, we were left with $150 profit.

That, combined with some money we earned from extra chores, plus a little grace from my parents, earned us what we so desperately wanted that summer.

And a 15-foot memory maker became fixed in our backyard for years to come.

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