Eggman

[rejectomorph]

Sacramento's high temperature today was 107^o. Gazing in the valley's hazy direction, I saw that rippling of the air which one sees above a conflagration. If the wails of the dying were visible, they would look like that. One hot day, when I was about eight years old, my mother said that it was hot enough to fry and egg on the sidewalk. I sneaked an egg out of the house and cracked it open on the cement walk in the back yard where the summer sunlight had made it so hot that it was painful to walk on with bare feet.

I was greatly disappointed that the egg failed to fry, and my mother was quite annoyed when she discovered that I had wasted an egg. When I pointed out that frying an egg on the sidewalk was her idea to begin with, she told me that it was only a figure of speech, and she made me wash the egg off the cement with the garden hose. I remember the egg residue clinging to the stems of flowers in the adjacent bed. Some of the water evaporated as it came in contact with the cement, and I watched the vapor drift and rapidly vanish as it was absorbed by the dessicated air. If my thoughts then had been made visible, they would have looked like that.

Comments

[shane.livejournal.com]

I am reminded of Amelia Bedelia (http://www.harperchildrens.com/hch/characters/ameliabedelia/).

[rejectomorph]

Wow, I'm older than the heroine of the books you read when you were growing up.

Few of the books I read when I was a kid were very interesting. Dr. Seuss was already around, but somehow I never got hold of any of his work. Other than The Bear That Wasn't, I can think of no books I read then that I'd care to revisit.

[myasma.livejournal.com]

I am in some nameless town in Washington, where they are complaining about the 80 degree heat. I was struck by how late the sun set--at 9:30 there was still light in the western horizon.

[rejectomorph]

You picked the perfect time to be away.