February 19
Thursday, January 13, 2011 at 1:29PM Believe that chickens squawk when taken from the roost.
—John Ransom’s Andersonville Diary, 1881
I just read an article about chickens being one of the largest exports in Georgia. Why can’t the countries these chickens are sent to grow their own chickens instead of exporting so many from the United States?
—Bob Markert, of Roswell, to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Q&A on the News”
Dear Dixie,
What the cluck! Where … is the cluck!
Historically, I know when you introduce something to the world that’s revolutionary … revolutionary and it also works real good … you’ll initially get a whole bunch of resistance and jealousy and plotting against you and mischief making. Take the guillotine. Revolutionary. It works real good. Finally embraced. It was a crowd pleasure, actually.
But not the plucked chicken lately. It may change the lives of kids for the much better, but there are those who are bathed in jealousy and misunderstanding and confusion out there … so what I’m going to do is like one of those movies you go see that start at the end and work its way back to the beginning and usually win an Oscar or whatever.
In other words, after I walked into The Cozy Room of Learning and became horrified about something here’s what happened in reverse order …
- Lurlene gives me a hugely exasperated look and huffs back down the hallway
- I yelled at Lurlene … Yessir! It stops … right now!
- Lurlene appeared in my doorway all huffy and said all this goofiness has to stop right now before it gets to Skip
- Milo and Debbie got all riled up and freaked out and ran over to the high school building in search of something revolutionary and word gets back to Lurlene that two of our goofy kids are over here bothering us
- Tempest and Petal reversed their attitude and joined the happy bandwagon because I figure they see this caper as an opportunity to do something fun and goofy and it might even get them out of doing work and possibly even going to class
- I made a new folder in my e-mail system titled The Chicken Caper because I was receiving so many horrible e-mails from the kidnappers … taunting my emotions and mature sensibilities
- I stared at my computer screen at a picture of the plucked chicken between the teeth of a horrifying and wide open mouth about to bite its neck
Next Entry ... February 23: Pole Dancing