Eggs to You, Sweet Phones and Brats in Motion

Last week I mentioned that when the son was young his goal in life was to be master of the universe. After keeping the grand-brats last weekend I am going to advise him to change his goal. If I have difficulty keeping track of a couple of Grand-brats for three days it seems keeping track of several hundred million people just might be impossible. I intend to advise him to adjust his ambition to just ruling a few counties or maybe a state or two.

The stories in this column are true. Averett lives a dull life in rural Southside Virginia with his wife Management, two children and a rotating assortment of goats, dogs, cats, snakes and other local fauna.

When the brats were mine I don’t remember that keeping them was that difficult. Maybe I’m out of practice or maybe the Grand-brats are more difficult than brats. Another possibility is the genetics. I have always had an issue with staying still. There is even some scientific theory that “an Averett in motion will stay in motion until some force (Management) acts upon it.” The same appears to be true with the Grand-brats. I think I am going to change their names to Ricochet Rabbit and the Pinball Kid. They bounce off walls, furniture and each other until some force (me) acts upon them.

A couple of months ago the battery charger for my camera vanished. I questioned coworkers, family and strangers. It was obvious someone took it. Yesterday I caught the culprit. I was cleaning out Management’s car and there it was. The problem is now that I found it I know who put it there. I’d reprimand the person except I now remember the culprit was me.

Management just bought me a new cell phone. I was perfectly happy with my first phone which was the size of a brick. It worked fine. Then Management and the brats insisted I upgrade to one of the new fancy phones that are the size of a postage stamp and takes pictures, receives text messages, sings and dances, and generally does lots of things other than phone calls. I didn’t want it, didn’t like it and objected to it. Still, after a few years my phone and I developed a relationship.

Then Management upgraded my phone with a new company. I couldn’t get my suicide bomber ring tone and it just wasn’t what I was used to. So, yesterday a new phone arrived. It is the latest model and is about the size of a brick only thinner. It seems that the “new” cell phones need larger screens for the text messages I don’t use. Now, I have to adjust again.

I have my suicide bomber ring tone again which is good. Management also added one of “our” songs as the ring tone when she calls me. I really like it. The phone rings and I think of her. It makes me smile. The problem is I smile and enjoy the song but forget to answer the phone.

We just finished rebuilding the chicken jail and incarcerated the chickens. Now they aren’t scratching up Management’s yard and providing meals for the neighborhood dogs. They must like it since they promptly started laying eggs. On the other hand, they may have been laying eggs and hiding them for weeks without telling me. One day I’ll find a nest of eggs on the verge of exploding and have to move them.

I learned a lot of lessons about life, people and eggs when I was a teenager. I was working at a grocery store and one of my duties was to put eggs in cartons and sort out the cracked ones. Step one was to attempt to sell the cracked ones for half price. If they didn’t sell within a day I was supposed to throw them away. Instead of wasting them I stockpiled them behind the store for Halloween.

One day one of the rich women in town came in for a dozen cracked eggs. We didn’t have any and she was upset with me. When I asked the boss what to do he said, “Well, crack her a dozen.” That was when I learned rich folks get better service than poor folks.

By the time Halloween rolled around I had stockpiled two cases of rotten eggs. Several friends and I stopped by to pick them up. I brought out the first case and returned for the other one. When I returned I found my “friends” happily egging the front of the store that I would have to clean the next day. I learned several things regarding the character of my friends that night.

Later I learned some valuable lessons on physics and aerodynamics. I learned when you throw a rotten egg forward out of the window of a moving car the combination of wind, motion and weight of the egg may result in the egg returning to the window and exploding. This caused a chain reaction whereby the remaining box of eggs was dropped into the case of eggs.

The result could have been really ugly but fortunately it wasn’t my car so everything was fine.