The Path of the Bookseller

It turns out that I was wrong about the ballistics of raw eggs.

When this one came flying out of a car window tonight, accompanied by a cackle that I suspect was intended to sound menacing but was instead rather goofy, it hit the guy standing closest to the curb and broke open against his leg. Instead of stopping there, though, the actual innards of the egg escaped the shell and kept flying for several more feet until it hit my thigh, where it finally broke apart, dribbling down my leg and onto my sneaker.

It figures that I had bought some new black jeans yesterday and was wearing them for the first time tonight. At least the egg wasn’t rotten.

The guy in front pointed his middle finger in the general direction that traffic was flowing. His girlfriend gazed around stunned. The woman next to them quickly got off her cell phone. “Did we just experience a drive-by egging?” she asked.

“Um, yeah,” he said. He looked off to where he was pointing and yelled, “Coward!” then shrugged.

“What’s the point of someone doing that?” his girlfriend asked.

“Well,” I said, “it may be the only way that pathetic twerp has any impact on the world.”

“Did you get hit, too?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Who knew that a yolk could ricochet?”

The light changed and we crossed the street together.

“Did it get you bad?” asked the woman with the phone.

The guy looked down. “That’s weird,” he said. There was no egg on him, other than a bit of shell resting on his right sneaker.

“It got me,” I said. “But it’ll wash out.”

“But look at us now,” the guy said. “Here we are, four strangers, and suddenly, through an act of random violence, we’re the best of friends. What are you all doing tomorrow? I’m free.”

“Me, I’m sleeping in,” the woman said. “I’m going to get a late breakfast. But not eggs.”