Eating Lemons

Ever eat a lemon?

Picture a series of lemon-eating, funky-lip faces, a wonderful Andy Warhol montage. I would pay $400 Zlotys to see it at New York’s Whitney Museum. I would pay $280 Zlotys to see it at the San Antonio Museum for the Arts. In Burkina Faso you might have to pay me to see it, as there is no direct flight and the rebels have captured all the artists.

I once read that Texas dentists were trying to get children to stop eating lemons. There is a tradition of Southwest lemon eating that goes back generations: cut a hole in a lemon, shove in some dried, salted piece of fruit called “Chinese candy,” and then squeeze the tangy, salty juice all over your tounge and your fringed rodeo shirt and your alligator boots and everything else you?ve got on.

Well it seems lemon eating plays hell with your tooth enamel, and Texans have been urged by their dentists to cease and desist and watch Lemony Snicket movies instead. Which is not to say that Jim Carey is a favorite of Lone Star dentists either, but at least he doesn?t promote tooth decay. They think.

On the other hand, a chat room poster I know named Green Hell reminds us that ?lemons rock, brilliant when your slamming tequila and you just eat one! Gobble…?

I was once at a party where people dared each other to eat whole lemons. No salt, no tequila, no Chinese candy. Just eat the freakin? thing, and someone did. We all whipped out our cell phones and snapped a shot for posterity, and within seconds the puckered face flew across the country (either Canada or Burkina Faso, I?m not sure).

The face was rather expressive, flaring nostrils and scrunched up eyes and a tongue flopping wildly around the mouth. Needless to say, this is not the face you want on your driver?s license, though State Police have been known to pity really ugly photo takers and reduce bribes by as much as 23 percent.

When the lemon eater, a goofy drunk named Ed, took a gander at his photo, he was aghast. ?OK,? he said, ?that was funny, now everyone erase the photos, please.?

I guess lemons and potential worldwide ridicule can sober a fellow up in a hurry.

The rest is history. Ed?s new moniker is Lemon Ed, and he is the new spokesperson for the National Lemon Board. The NLB, with offices in 49 states, has Ed traveling up and down the Gulf of Mexico, working Dallas dentists and disarming Houston hygienists with funny stories (and cash). The new ?Lemons Are Our Friends? bill will be voted on in Austin on January 28th, and all in all Ed has been pretty successful.

Plus, Ed met the new president of Burkina Faso, and that was pretty cool, too. Ed signed the Lemon Faced Boy photograph that hangs on the President?s wall, and together they split and ate a lemon and laughed at each others? sqwinchy face.

So the next time you?re at a party and someone suggests ingesting a rutabaga or devouring a whole turkey in under a minute, look at him in a friendly manner and tell him (or her, or it, or them, or them it), ?Hey, if Lemons were good enough for Lemon Ed, they?re good enough for me!?

(This advertorial was paid for by the Texas-Burkina Faso Society to Promote Worldwide Lemony Friendship. Lemon Ed, President)