A Blown Assignment
March 28, 2002
7:27 a.m.
We were eating dinner yesterday when Brigid announced that she needed to take a blown egg into school tomorrow (today) for her Spanish class. If you don't know, a blown egg is a hollow eggshell. You pierce both ends of the shell with a pin, and then apply lung pressure to one end until such a time as you have a runny yellow mess on the outside of the egg, and nothing on the inside. I used to do this with my mother when I was a kid, and thought it was always kind of cool. "How long have you known about this?" Lisa asked. "Well, since yesterday." "You're lucky I went to the store today," Lisa said. "Yesterday would have been a better time to have brought this up." "Well, I just thought of it." "That's all right. The worst time to bring it up would have been tomorrow morning."   So we flash forward to this morning. Me: Diligently plunking away at the keyboard, making good progress against my goal of finishing the copyedit by sometime tomorrow. Lisa: (calling sleepily down the stairwell) Ron? Me: (in a bright, chipper voice) Yes, Dear? Lisa: Can you come help us? I walked immediately up the stairs to find Lisa and Brigid huddled around an egg. I should note that my beloved wife does not normally come downstairs until she has had her shower and gotten ready for the day, but now she was in her pajamas with that "I coulda slept a century more" look on her face. Brigid, it seems, had again forgotten her assignment, and needed immediate help. (We'll ignore the fact that I had forgotten it, too ... it's not my homework, after all). Ron: (looking at the teeny holes they had poked in the egg) You need bigger holes. Lisa: (being remarkably polite for having been woken up) We used the pin in the egg cooker. I looked at the cooker and saw they would never work. Ron: Let me do this. So we got a big pin, and I went to work. Lisa retreated to the shower where she hopefully got back on the right track for the day. Ten minutes of huffing and puffing later the egg was hollow, and Brigid was preparing to catch the bus. Ron: Give'em shell today at school, Brigid. Brigid: Eggscellent. Ron: Ack! I've really blown it today. Brigid: Arggggggggggg! Despite all that excitement, I did manage to make enough progress that finishing the copyediting changes by tomorrow is still in the realm of possibility. Have a great day.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
|
BACK TO 
|