This past summer (after the world race and before CGA) I worked at Trout Lake Camps in Minnesota. How I ended up there is a story in itself, ask me sometime if you’d like to hear it. I was a counselor for most of my time there, living in a cabin with 11 middle school girls. It was exhausting and it was great.
I’m not sure what it is about me that compels others to nickname me, but it happens nearly everywhere I go. And I’m okay with that.
In one of my most difficult weeks at camp, I was playing a game with my girls in which we all said a food that started with the same letter as our name, followed by our name. The goal was to help us remember one another’s names. So I said, “Lemonade LeAnn.”
At this point its important to call to attention my Kentucky accent. Most people in Minnesota had heard nothing like it before meeting me. When I said “Lemonade LeAnn” in my Kentucky accent, the girls in my cabin just could not handle it. They laughed so hard. I was like, “What?” And they proceeded to imitate me.
If I was more techie, here’s where I’d have included a recording of someone (probably me) saying “Lemonade LeAnn” the way they said it. You’ll just have to ask me to do it for you sometime haha.
Anyway, so the name stuck. My whole cabin called me Lemonade LeAnn. My fellow camp staff started calling me Lemonade LeAnn. People I didn’t even know started calling me Lemonade LeAnn. The girls in my cabin loved saying it so much that they’d do it just for fun even when I wasn’t around. A few times I heard their voices chanting it across the camp. We made cabin cheers up every day and one day they made the cheer “LEMONADE LEANN! LEMONADE LEANN! LEMONADE LEANN!” All I could do was laugh.
If you know me, you know that I like to tell stories. So I told this story to some of my friends at CGA, and now my roommate calls me Lemonade. Sometimes Lemonade LeAnn, but mostly just Lemonade. She wrote a blessing for me that said “Lemonade, you are refreshing.” When I commented on it she remarked, “Its true. You are Lemonade. You’re sweet, but you’re also sassy like lemonade is sour. You bring a lot of joy to people but you’re also not afraid to make your thoughts and feelings known even when they aren’t super fun.”
So there ya go, I am Lemonade. Sweet, sassy, and refreshing. I think it was prophetic. God’s funny like that.
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