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Egg on Your Face
By courtney | July 24, 2010
Portland is nothing if not opinionated.
In this city, it is expected that you not only will, but should be as vocal as humanly possible about your views on everything. Passionately believe that you know the only way to do it! Explain to everyone why they ought to be more like you! And gosh darn it, you better put a bumper sticker on your car so that everyone knows all of the time! (My favorite bumper sticker: Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup. That’s just plain good advice, isn’t it?)
Of course, Keith and I are perverse people and feel that it is very fun to mess with this sort of passionate self-interest when we encounter it. For that’s what much of it is: self-centered arrogance and the idea that it is acceptable to bully and guilt people into being just like you. So when we run into it, we like to find unusual ways to respond.
One of Portland’s favorite drums to beat is eat and buy locally. Now, we do think that this a good idea for many reasons… but it is not necessary to accost people over it, now is it? So we find that the quickest way to silence that drum is to mention Veronica. It goes like this.
“Do you know where your eggs come from? Do you know the conditions those chickens live in? How can you —”
“Yes. Have you met Veronica? She is a black-and-white speckled chicken who lives in SE Portland with two other of her lady friends. They have a posh coop that they live in together with a large yard to strut around. Veronica herself is sassy and has fancy feathers on her feet. Her eggs are narrow, brown, and extremely delicious. We have a good relationship going: we buy her eggs, and she gets absolutely spoiled by the coop’s landlord, 11-year-old Paige. What’s your chicken like?”
“Uhh –”
And thus ends the exchange. The moral of the story is: if you try acting superior, you end up getting one-up’d by a chicken.
P.S. Veronica and her lady friends recently gained two new roommates! When I stopped by to see our favorite urban farmer yesterday, I got to meet Juliet (left) and Ruby (right). Paige posed them for a picture for me. What cute chicks!
Topics: daily life, food | 1 Comment »
July 24th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
You ahave got to publish this stuff. It is fantastic. Great work at home idea. I would buy it!