Bo's Column; #5.

Courtesy Bo Quintana; Milton Teen

One of the great things about summertime in Milton is the various farmers’ markets in this area, where you can find all kinds of home-grown fruits, veggies, peanuts and eggs.

Yes, eggs. Organic, and straight from the coop, no middleman. But have you ever thought about eggs? I mean really thought about them?

Eggs, if you somehow didn’t know, are little, shelled ovals full of chicken fetuses (feti?). They’re usually eaten for breakfast, prepared in various forms including scrambled, sunny side up, and soft or hard boiled. But do you know where eggs come from? Eggs are produced via a chicken’s butt. OK, egg farmers call it a “vent” but it looks like a butt to me.

Which brings up the most interesting question about eggs: Who was the bonzo who decided it would be a good idea to pop one of these little things into his mouth?

I mean eggs are indeed tasty, but why would anyone watch a chicken excrete this little thing and then decide that it could make for a great meal? And the first person to eat an egg probably didn’t have the mental capacity to cook it first; he must have eaten in raw.

Then, after he ate it the first one, he probably thought, “Boy, that tasted nasty. Let’s try this again.” Then he ate another. According to the scientific method, this guy would have to eat raw eggs for quite a while before he thought to cook one up. Which means there was once a human who ate multiple raw eggs intentionally and didn’t quit.

According to the googles, consuming raw eggs typically brings salmonella, which in turn brings food poisoning. Also according to the googles, some symptoms of food poisoning are:

• Nausea • Vomiting • Watery diarrhea • Abdominal pain and cramps • Fever

And that it is vital to visit a doctor once:

• Frequent episodes of vomiting occur, interfering with your ability to keep liquids down • Vomiting blood occurs • You have severe diarrhea for more than three days • You see blood in your bowel movements • You experience extreme pain or severe abdominal cramping • An oral temperature reads higher than 101.5 F (38.6 C) • You have signs or symptoms of dehydration, excessive thirst, dry mouth, little or no urination, severe weakness, dizziness or lightheadedness • You have difficulty speaking • You have trouble swallowing • You experience double vision • You have muscle weakness that progresses downward.

So what does this mean? Does it mean that primitive humans were really, really stupid? Stubborn?

Not at all. All this means is that we are really persistent (especially when hungry). Because there was a dude who, for the better of the human race, likely excreted blood at least twice. And this is cool. Because eventually, he learned that cooking eggs is cool. And then he learned that eating cooked eggs eliminates the blood excretion. And then he taught people how to cook and eat eggs. And those people told other people, and now we enjoy Denver Omelets.

So what does this have to do with life in Milton? Only one thing: we need to create some cool stuff for the goodness of the human race. We have some insanely intelligent people here, we need to produce some insanely cool stuff.

Like walrus-shaped hats. Alarm clocks that sing American Folk Songs. Edible pine straw. That would be legit. So let’s do some seemingly stupid but actually genius stuff, Milton. Let’s make some walrus hats!

With love and endless persistence,

Bo