Location, location, location.

Picking Tertius up from a playdate, I'm instantly flagged down and hustled out of fifty cents for a cup of lemonade at a stand he and his friend have erected outside his host's house.

They're not doing too well, despite unabashed enthusiasm. I suggested that the farthest point on the looping road around a gated community that's on an island isn't exactly a high traffic spot.* Indeed, I think their only previous customer was the FedEx delivery guy.

Tertius announces that not only are they selling lemonade, but homemade comics and trading cards, which they drew and xeroxed themselves.

"So what's the comic about?" I ask.

"The adventures of General Boxer-shorts."

"Isn't that a bit like Captain Underpants?" (Captain U. is the hero of a well-established series of kids books.)

"No," he says instantly, with defiance.

"Then how is it different?"

"Well, he's a general and it's boxer shorts." Of course.

*Ironically, this now-exclusive part of Rye was actually the first chunk of land sold to European settlers by the Mohegan indians.