Ways your egg can kill you

Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker said:

Here's how it happens:

You buy an egg because your buddy has one and you want to be cool like him even though he has a BMW and you don't but just watch, you will one day, and it'll be a 5 series, not that stupid 3 series he has. but anyway....

you decide the first cook will be a nice rib roast. at the grocery store, you discover they don't have any good rib roasts because (says a meat man manager-type) "they say a truck broke down and all the beef due in has spoiled from the heat".

luckily, some old lady in a bonnet with a brim of bumped blue buckram mentions she has an extra coupon for a turkey, if you want it, and you do. want it. the coupon, i mean, not the hat.

so you have her show you where they are, thank you very much, and you reach into the case to get a turkey for her and a turkey for yourself because that's just how you are and gee it's only proper and "well you gave me your extra coupon I mean don't think of it. you're welcome".

she's all "my these open cases are awfully cold even though they are open, aren't they?", and you are just biting your tongue and thinking "oh just stifle it" but you smile and nod and hate her from the inside because you just do and so what, and what business is it of anyone's why?

less charitably, you hang back a second pretending to check your pretend grocery list, a receipt you found in your back pocket from that craft fair you went to looking for one of those machines that automatically knits socks and tubes and stuff like that. not a list at all but she's too stupid to know, i mean look at her what is she, 80?

she smiles and thanks you and says "you're a nice young man" and turns toward the aisles asking "cat litter?" You point to where the cat litter isn't but who cares why should you know where the cat litter is?

Her back to you and your front to the side, you knock her hat into the cooler. In befuddlement, bewildered, she bends and reaches.

In the moment, without a pause and with breath abated, you take a bill from the wallet of her purse, which she has sitting in the little seat of the carriage, coupons and mints and wallet at the ready.

Pocketing the bill, a ten, newly crisp, you point out to her as she rises that "gee your purse is open and someone could take your wallet if they wanted", and she thanks you. you mention she looks familiar, like maybe from church. and then you laugh to yourself walking away. she calls after you "thank you again!" such a nice young man.

at the checkout counter, you pay by check, so that you can spend a lot longer ogling the woman ringing up your order. you say things like "i have a large big green egg", and "I am considering purchasing a BMW five series"

into the air, humid and hanging, the light from the sun on your face, a face basking already in triumph and not needing the sun at all really.

crossing the parking lot, you throw the receipt on the ground because, let's face it, it's trash and that's really not your problem. wait. was it? half a step to stop, and a step back to check. yep. you see instead that it was the ten that you'd dropped.

so you set the turkey on the front fender of a Fairlane, powder blue, with original four-digit low-number license plate with expired tags, and bumperettes that you are sure weren't factory. Whose car? Who cares? Turkey dent and all.

Bending to pick up the ten, you hear the engine start and the wipers get to slapping. Wipers on a sunny day (see: spoiled rib roasts, above).

The Fairlane fairly lurches forward, throwing you to the ground, the right front wheel riding up your shirt (first), then up and over your surrendering ribcage (second), said ribs cracking loudly and audibly, surprising you, frankly. Your neck feels pierced with something sharp, but the tire seems so smooth and round. Might call it bald, even.

A shuddering, too-late, lurching stop bodes well, but you realize(as the lights begin to blink out one by one) that it is done. Your heart has been stopped, and the last trillion atoms of oxygen in the already stilled blood are merely keeping your brain alive a little longer while the rest of you is already, clinically, assuredly, regrettably, dead.

lightheadedness setting in. You realize it isn't as poetic and profound as you thought it would be. Rather than angels and regrets, there are flashes of absurdity. "I was looking forward to turkey". Your mind refusing to acknowledge the obvious. "I'll be ok if I can just sit up. Really. Someone help me up..."

And as the darkness closes in from all sides, as you resign yourself to oblivion, a figure leans over you. The shadow from a blue bonnet falls across your face...

"Oh my. Oh dear.... Are you ok, young man....?"

The crumpled ten falling from your loosening fist rolls an inch or two, until it stops against the toe of her left foot's patent leather flat. The heel is rounded, and there are salt stains from the winter six months past.

They are Bally's, size five.


(with apologies to Roald Dahl, O. Henry, David Foster Wallace, et al)