When Life Gives You Lemons, Start a GoFundMe

I just wanted to take a quick second and update you on the fabulous progress of our lemonade stand fundraiser.

If you will recall, two months ago I started a GoFundMe page in response to the heartwarming and totally logical outpouring of support for the Berkeley, CA hot dog vendor who was running an illegal, unregulated, and most-likely unsanitary hot dog stand outside a football game. The police arrived to shut him down, and took his sixty dollars into evidence.

A nice man filmed the episode while kindly giving the police officer career advice, and then put the video on the internet and started a GoFundMe page to help the then-unnamed hot dog scofflaw with his legal expenses. Naturally, they have raised $93,000.

Not wanting to let that kind of largess pass my neighborhood by, I started my own GoFundMe to raise money for our possible legal fees if our unregulated and unsanitary lemonade stand was ever shut down by local law enforcement. And also in case we needed tacos.

You can find our ongoing fundraiser page at: https://www.gofundme.com/smidges-little-lemonade-stand-fund

Again, here’s the compelling verbiage from our campaign:

Describe who will benefit:

Me (and also my poor, deserving children, maybe)

Detail what the funds will be used for:

Possible legal expenses and loss of income if we are ever hassled by the police over business license issues.

And tacos.

Explain how soon you need the funds:

ASAP! Who knows when we could be unfairly ticketed or shut down.

Plus, we want tacos.

Talk about what the support will mean to you:

After the recent outpouring of support for the Berkeley hot dog vendor, I just figured, hey, people love to support other people who run non-licensed and totally unregulated street food operations, so your donation to this campaign will mean the world to me!

Share how grateful you will be for help:

I will be so grateful for your support, I might even "pay it forward" by giving this money (after any upcoming legal and taco expenses, of course) to my good friends at RPAL - the Roseville Police Activities League - an amazing non-profit organization that helps kids in need, and steers them in the right direction, so they don't grow up thinking they have the right to run illegal businesses.

Again, our GoFundMe link is: https://www.gofundme.com/smidges-little-lemonade-stand-fund

Well, as you can imagine based on the success of the hot dog guy’s campaign, our lemonade stand fundraiser has taken off like a rocket. Thankfully, we have not incurred any stand-related legal expenses to date, and we’ve been mooching tacos off the neighbors, so just this evening we were able to present the entire amount raised thus far to the amazing folks at RPAL.

Thanks to the overwhelming generosity of good folks like you, our steamrolling juggernaut of a fundraiser has collected an astounding $49.44.

I was proud to present the oversized cardboard check to RPAL tonight at the gala awards banquet. It was tough to get a handle on all the emotions of the evening, due to the media frenzy surrounding the check presentation, but I think I kept my composure admirably.

Remember, you can find our GoFundMe page at: https://www.gofundme.com/smidges-little-lemonade-stand-fund

While we are basking in the glow of high achievement tonight, we must remember a lot of work remains to be done. We’re thrilled with our progress so far, but we’re still about $99,945.00 shy of our goal, so please continue to give generously.

Once again, our GoFundMe link is: https://www.gofundme.com/smidges-little-lemonade-stand-fund

Thanks for your continued support!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2017 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

I'm Thankful for Witches and Cereal

The list of things I’m thankful for is long, and includes my family, nachos, our church, orthopedic insoles, my health, generic Advil, good friends, and pretty much any pork product, just to name a few.

I am also very thankful for my job as an author, because it allows me to visit so many elementary-age students and attempt to inspire them to do big things. I even get to create stories with some of them. I’ve been writing progressive fairy tales with the kindergarten classes at our elementary school for years now. Each child adds the next sentence to the story, and they are hilarious.

On this Thanksgiving eve, I am especially thankful for an organization called RPAL – the Roseville Police Activities League – and for its director, Vivi Nevarez, and all the volunteers that help run this great after school and summer activities program. The mix of kids is everywhere from your run-of-the-mill elementary schooler looking for a fun afternoon program all the way to some very at-risk youth who could be one misstep away from a much different life. Most of the kids come from low-income, single-parent homes or foster care.

RPAL and programs like it all across the country are known to be the largest organized crime prevention programs we have as a nation, and the people who dedicate their lives to facilitating these programs cannot be thanked enough.

I was fortunate enough to be asked to come do an author workshop with the RPAL kids yesterday, and we wrote a progressive fairy tale with a group of twelve young people ranging from second grade to high school.

It was a room full of wonderful imaginations. An obvious love of cereal, combined with some Harry Potter and Hansel and Gretel influences, as well as a ton of good old-fashioned making stuff up brings us this:

Enjoy!

The Cinnamon Toast Crunch Incident (Alternate title: Maybe We Just Go to the Store Next Time)

By Oliver, Marvin, Messiah, Aiden, Jonathan, Kimberly, Carolyn, Jazmin, Jasmine, Cassie, Gianna and Cianna

Once upon a time there was a funny talking robot tennis ball named Jack, who bounced around from place to place. He was friends with a fast orange turtle named Raisin who was generally mean to everyone he met.

One day they desperately wanted to eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal, but they had no milk. They naturally decided to go look for a magical cow to milk in the deep dark forest. After three suns and two moons of fruitless searching for a milk cow, they encountered a dark, evil witch.

Before they could resist, the witch cast a spell on them with her twisted magical wand that was made with the feather of a Phoenix, and they found themselves floating into her dark, creepy house.

Jack and Raisin were floating past the witch when Jack used his extendable robot arm, that could extend over five hundred million thousand feet. He extended his arm like lightning and grabbed the magic wand out of the evil witch’s hand.

Unfortunately, she had a second wand, and she pulled it out of her cloak and used it to continue levitating them into her huge oven. The door slammed behind them and the fire came to life under them.

Jack, thinking quickly, used the first wand that he was still holding in his extendable hand to conjure up a full-size cow inside the oven with them. The cow broke the oven open with its enormous body, and immediately kicked the evil witch right in head and sent her flying one thousand billion trillion feet into the air.

With the witch gone for good, the black and white cow just stood there mooing at the two friends. Jack used the magic wand to levitate their Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal to the witch’s kitchen table, then politely asked the cow if they could milk her.

The cow was nice enough to say yes, and the two friends finally enjoyed their delicious breakfast. After they were done eating, Jack and the cow jumped onto Raisin’s back, and the super-fast turtle ran them all the way home. When they got there, they filled their whole house with Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and milked the magical cow for one trillion years until the whole house was a gigantic bowl of cereal.

The end.

Thank you Vivi, and all the other RPAL rock stars, for the opportunity to come hang out with your kids for a few hours and bring this story to life. I am very thankful for your tireless dedication. Keep up the good work!

Have a great Thanksgiving!

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!