Dramatic Structure Denied

Originally Posted Friday, October 10, 2014

"Do you want a hard-boiled egg?" I asked my friend.  She was in my office at the factory and I was starving and wanting to eat but I didn't want to be rude. 

She thought a moment and then said, "Sure."

C.C. was in the office as well.   "You?" 

"No, I'm going to go have a drink.  I can't both eat and drink." 

A bit later, after we had eaten and were snacking on some chips my friend brought in, I said, "A weird thing happened to me this morning.  Strange segue, right?"

"Intrigued," she said. 

"This has never happened to me before, so I thought it strange.  When I boiled the eggs, they floated.  All three of them.  I've never seen anything like it."

My friend crinkled her forehead.  "That means they're bad," she said.  C.C. looked amused, relieved, I guess, that he had not eaten one of the rotten eggs.

"No way.  They didn't taste bad.  They were alright, right?"

"When I peeled it, there was a strange yellow film on it, but I didn't say anything."

"Bullshit," I said.  "I'm going to use The Google." 

I typed in "boiled eggs flo. . . " and Google finished the line for me.  There were a lot of hits.  Guess what they all said?  It seems that eggs float when they are old.  Bacteria inside begin to release gasses that are trapped by the egg's shell making them buoyant. 

Another friend from the factory walked by.  I told him what I had just read.  "I guess we'll know tonight."

"I used to be an EMT.  Six to eight hours." 

My friend was looking at me weirdly as if I'd done this on purpose.

"Why did you tell me?  Now my stomach is starting to gurgle.  You could have told me before you gave me the egg." 

"I didn't know," I said thinking how pathetically stupid that sounded. 

"Let me cook for you sometime," she said.  I didn't like the sound of that. 

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't think.  Surely cooking it killed any bad bacteria.  We'll be fine," I said, my own belly now connected to my brain.  Psyche. 

I walked around the rest of the afternoon wondering what the next hours would bring.  I told people the story.  They all laughed. 

"Cooking would have killed any bacteria, right?" I asked as if they were all experts and would know. 

"Maybe.  You'll find out," they universally responded with delight.  All the vegans literally glowed with righteousness. 

"You eat out of date food all the time, don't you?"

"No!  Why do you say that?"

"The chips in the snack room were out of date and I was going to throw them away but you told me to leave them." 

"That was the 'sell by' date.  They were still good." 

But I am bad.  I never check dates.  I have cans in my pantry that are years old.  I guess I figure food smells if it is bad.  Seems you might know right away.  I thought back.  The eggs might be old.  A month.  Two, maybe. 

Last night, my belly boiled after dinner.  There was no vomiting, no diarrhea.  Perhaps my head was having its say.  But I went to bed early thinking that somehow something might be avoided. 

I am good this morning, I am here to report.  I knew I'd be O.K.  People eat rotten hippo meat on the river banks of the Nile.  They just cook it like crazy.  Hell, that is the whole point of cooking food.  It is all bad, right?  Just cook the hell out of things. 

O.K.  This tale was anticlimactic.  I should have made a fictional ending with me clinging to the sides of the toilet bowl.  But I strive for verisimilitude if not truth.  And so. . . I have deviated from Freytag's Triangle.  It hardly matters.  It is Friday.  We have a whole weekend of adventure before us.  By Monday, there will be a hundred tales to tell.  It will only be a matter of choosing which ones. 

Selah.