That will be five cents, please

There were three young girls selling lemonade on my street today. I don’t know how old, exactly, I’m not a good judge of age, possibly ten or thereabouts; I could probably have taken them in a fight, if they didn’t gang up on me. Anyway, I bought a glass of weak half-boiled-lemon-flavoured water on my way past ‘cause I’m just a big old softie. But I passed them again on the way back, and heard them practicing, very loudly, for the next passer-by: “Mmm! What delicious lemonade! Wherever did you get it!”

Oddly, my first reaction was Awww, isn’t that sweet, when what they were doing was practicing emotionally manipulative advertising pitches, and if any grown-up were to try that sort of thing on me I’d kneecap them. More or less metaphorically. I’m getting less and less patient with fast-food counter-clerks who try to upsell me the fries.

“I’d like the classic chicken club sandwich, please.”

“Would you like the sandwich or the combo?”

“What did I just say?”

One day I’m going to go too far.

“Here’s your sandwich, sir.”

“Here’s a $20 bill.”

“Do you have anything smaller, sir?”

“No.”

“But I just saw you put a $5 bill back into your pocket.”

“Yeah, and you heard me order the combo instead of the sandwich. I’d get that checked if I were you. It might be degenerative.”

There, now I’ve written it down here I don’t have to say it. But I digress. There was something innocent about the kids’ approach that took almost all of the manipulation out of it. Just listening to them, you could tell that this wasn’t about cornering the lemonade market, it wasn’t about charging ridiculous prices for shoddy lemonade squeezed out of the blood and sweat of underpaid Lemonese workers in corporate slave-labour camps in Lemonia; these kids were on an adventure. They were trying out manipulative advertising techniques because those are the rules. And they were having fun doing it. I almost went back and bought another glass, except it tasted like weak half-boiled-lemon-flavoured water.

Explaining that they were manipulative little cretins peddling half-rate merchandise to the credulous masses would have felt like kicking puppies. They’re kids. They’ll get better. Someday they’ll learn the difference between advertising that introduces a beneficient product to the consumer and advertising that tries to trick the consumer into buying a shoddy half-assed product. And they’ll learn by doing, which means stories, which means memories, which means growth.

So yeah, my hat’s off to them. Unless they knew exactly what they were doing all along and were manipulating me into thinking they didn’t. In which case I’m gonna kneecap them.

Grammar Pedant asks: Which sentence makes it clearer that this was a joke?

• I could probably have taken them in a fight if they didn’t gang up on me.

• I could probably have taken them in a fight, if they didn’t gang up on me.

The second one, right? If those sentences were being spoken rather than written down, the first version would be a simple statement of fact, but the comma in the second version would mean that the first half of the sentence was a complete thought, with the second half casually added on. The first looks like a flat declaration of fact; the second is delivered with more inflection. Written down, it’s completely deadpan either way and stupid people would be well within their rights to assume that the writer seriously considers beating up ten-year-old girls, but if one is trying to express oneself without vocal intonation, the second sentence just looks more sardonic. And the pause gives you a moment to think, to realise that the writer probably isn’t being serious.

One single comma, all that extra meaning. This is why I only write four words a day on average.