ridiculous question of the day

by mg at 05:30 PM on August 06, 2002

I’ve this awful habit of coming up with these ridiculous and inane questions. Normally, I’ll go around posing them to everyone about me until one of them come up with a suitable answer or I can synthesize enough of the unsuitable ones to come up with something that sounds like it holds water, scientifically (as opposed to just going on Google and looking it up and getting the real answer).

But, I’m still relatively new here at work and I don’t want to damage people’s already fragile opinions of me any further. How was I supposed to know when they said there was a “no shorts” policy that while it did mean I wasn’t allowed to wear shorts to work, I was still supposed to wear pants?

At any rate, just one such absurd question occurred to me this afternoon, and since I can’t ask it of those around me physically, I’ll ask those around me virtually – you poor bastards.

Okay, so here it is: When someone (certainly not me) saves money in preparation of having children, buying a station wagon, putting a down payment on a home, and all those other oh-so-very adult things, they say they are adding to their “nest egg.”

Wouldn’t they actually mean they were adding to your “egg nest”?

You know, how birds and stuff will grab up twigs, Marlboro butts, and candy wraps in their cute little beaks and add them and other biomaterials to make a nest for their eggs. We add 15% of our pre-tax income to a hedge fund in order to send our kids to college. It’s the same thing, right?

I mean, if you can’t afford to send your kids to college without saving up for thirty years prior, much less send them to one of New England’s finest boarding schools, you really shouldn’t be adding any more eggs to your nest, no matter how fun it is to get fertilized, if you know what I mean. It’s one thing if you were a bird, all you have to do is find a couple worms a day, sure the chewing and regurgitating thing would get a little tired, and might be cause for bulimic concern amongst a human population, but once your chicks are our of the nest and flying, you really never have to worry about them again.

So, how come, etymologically, when birds do it they are making a nest for their eggs and when humans do it we are making more eggs for our nest?

Please phrase your answer in the form of a question, use no more than 300 words, and hand your blue books to me at the end of class.