Our daily dose of merry-making

I'm always amazed by the way stand-up comedians can take any daily occurrence and build a routine around it. Jerry Seinfeld carried the talent even further by building a television sitcom around normal everyday happenings. But I think that if you and I look hard enough we can find the kind of things that attract the interest of the laugh-masters.

For me, a trip to the supermarket is always a source of column confetti.

A few weeks ago I journeyed to our local Wal-Mart. While in the produce section I noticed that eggs were reasonably priced at $0.99 a dozen. But in the same cooler section was a dozen for $2.27. Why the difference? The pricier eggs, it said on the container, were from "vegetarian-fed hens." I guess what that implies is that somewhere there is a group of layers that don't eat meat.

Prior to seeing this note I always thought chickens only ate seeds and stuff. When I spent time on my grandparent's farm I never saw a meat-eating chicken and I never found a bone in a gizzard. But I guess if the stores sell eggs from vegetarian fed hens there must exist hens that are not. Like maybe voodoo chickens.

I'm glad they told me because I would hate to knowingly eat eggs from cannibalistic fowl. Come to think of it, I'd really prefer not knowing what my 99- cent-a-dozen egg-layers ate. I guess some chickens do get to wander around and eat all sorts of squiggly things. If that's true then why should I be expected to pay extra for eggs produced by range-free poultry if vegetarian eater's eggs are better? Then again, could I have misinterpreted the note and in actuality the hens were just fed by vegetarians?

One other thing, it would only be fair of me to mention that each of the expensive eggs had a Disney character stamped on it. Do you think that might have influenced the pricing?

School daze revisited
When I went to school things were a lot less competitive and a lot less complicated. It was a time when the valedictorian was simply the smartest kid in the class. You could pick ours out even as a freshman. I mean Ned was smart. He stood out. Too, he was unique. And I was his best friend, which never really helped my grade average.

Ned walked with a pronounced limp: the results of having had polio when he was very young. But he never let it slow him down.

Ned didn't fit the mold of an intelligentsia. While class work came natural to him, extracurricular work was to be avoided by him at all costs, and I think that he used his handicap as a crutch to accomplish this. In addition to his lack of interest in physical exertion Ned had two other frailties: he was friends with me, which convinced the teachers would somehow be his downfall - it wasn't - and he really liked girls, which convinced his father would be his downfall - a concern that had some truth to it. And when the faculty wanted to advance him a grade so he could graduate sooner he refused because he wanted to finish school with the classmates he started with, and he did.

The only time he and I ever broached the subject of his smartness was when I went to visit him at his fraternity house at Western Reserve University in Cleveland (Now Case Western Reserve). He told me, "I thought I was smart until I met some of the other students here." Nonetheless he was our class leader, our champion. He was our valedictorian and we were proud of him.

After graduation when Ned was off to the halls of higher learning I was off to serve my time in the military service. And as these things happen we lost contact with one another. The last time we met we were sitting on the roof of his college frat house sharing a beer. And every time I think of that evening I wonder which of us was the bad influence.

Overheard
Overheard at the checkout counter: I would find it very uncomfortable trying to read the online news on a laptop while in the bathroom.