Me and Soft-Boiled Eggs

 

Today began as a Joe Btfsplk day for me. [Remember the character in Lil Abner cartoons who had a perpetual dark cloud hanging over him?  In the comic strip, bad things happened to Joe on a regular basis.] 

I now believe that most of the bad things that happened to Joe were not his fault. I think Joe is just like me. You be the judge after reading the following. Here is my Joe Btfsplk day.

Joe showed up while I was beginning my breakfast of soft -boiled eggs and toast. I followed my usual technique of cracking the eggs with the blunt edge of butter knife, as I had done for the last thirty years. This time an unexpected result occurred. The eggshell was too weak. I began my practice of using my thumb and opposite finger to break the egg in half at the site of the butter knife cut. I never got beyond that.

The egg suddenly broke and sent a stream of thick yellow yolk in my direction. The yolk came rushing toward me catching only the edge of my plate closest to my belly where it then spilled onto the table, and slowly dribbled into my lap and chair. It wasn’t finished. An overflow made a splat onto the floor between my feet. To add insult to injury, the yellow stream also left a tablespoon-sized dribble of yellow on the red placemat beneath my plate.

I grabbed the two napkins at my place setting in hopes of controlling the mess. In true Joe fashion they didn’t help that much. I quickly concluded there was no hope in wiping up the expanding mess from atop my chair. The only cure for it was to get to my hands and knees as soon as possible. The hands and knees thing wasn’t accomplished as soon as I wanted since my stiff joints prevent rapid-fire actions like that. Additionally, I had to stop in mid-crouch and rub my forehead since I bumped my head on the table on my first try at getting to the floor.

I was soon reduced to climbing around the floor with both napkins, furiously wiping and swearing at the same time. The two napkins had the effect of spreading the yellow mess across a wider spot on my freshly-laundered pants, and the recently cleaned floor. I cleaned the mess only after I retrieved a damp wash rag from the kitchen sink while the rest of my breakfast went from being warm to decidedly cool and the yellow yolk turned from liquid to concrete.

There was nothing for it, but to change my pants, pick up the stained placemat and add both to the growing pile of dirty clothes in the washing machine. I hoped that the mess on the floor would mysteriously disappear by the efforts of someone else, but I had no luck in that department either. It remained for me to scrub the floor until the yellow color disappeared. I did and it did.

Here’s hoping that the Joe Btfsplk spell is done for the day. At least Lil Abner would have been pleased by my ambition.

 

Lil Abner was a comic strip creation of the renowned cartoonist Al Capp. Capp lived long enough for me to enjoy some of his cartoons in a local newspaper. He was born in 1909 and he passed in 1979). His name was Alfred Gerald Caplin and he was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He created Li’l Abner in 1934 and took the name of Capp as a frequent and outspoken guest on 1940s and 1950s television. The prolific satirist also wrote a syndicated newspaper column, had his own syndicated radio show, and was a frequent guest lecturer at college campuses nationwide. Joe Btfsplk was one of many characters that Capp created for his cartoon strip that starred Lil Abner who was a perpetual 19-year-old whose most famous activity was evading the clutches of Daisy Mae. If you know how to pronounce Joe’s last name, let me know. Capp retired Li’l Abner in 1977 after a 43-year run.