All is safe on the western front, you sit down and enjoy the first breakfast that you ever cooked for yourself.
---------------------------------The End-----------------------------------
The Story of a Fried Egg had a second performance at Artspace in 1993 as part of an evening of performance works by Meita Winkler and myself. Both performances were documented on video neither is spectacular.
THE STORY OF A FRIED EGG
by Joe Lewis ©
1990
This is the story of a fried egg and a
story about all the
independence that came to the seven
year old who learned to
create such an object. Imagine, not
that you have to. imagine its
Sunday morning 7:00 am, Imagine that
your parents are still in
bed, asleep and that you are hungry,
cereal is easy but cereal is
boring, and besides that its Sunday
morning.
So, being the brave little soul that
you are you look into the
cupboard under the kitchen sink and
find the tiniest, teeniest
little frying pan that there is and, it
weighs a ton, you pull it
out, BANG, dam oops hope mom and dad
didn't hear that.
That's step one, now step two, go into
the dining room and look
for an empty chair that's laundry,
that's coats, that ones
Leah's, better not touch that or
she'll have a fit, that one, no
not that one this one this is the
chair.
Now what makes more noise pushing or
pulling, both but you have
come this far your not going to let
that stop you it doesn't
matter. So now the chair is in front of
the stove you climb up on
it and there. OH you forgot the eggs
and the frying pan, get down.
Now for the fridge, its easily open,
but then what the eggs are
at the top of the door, you could just
reach up there, but you
might drop them. Now consider what's
worse the noise the chair
will make as you drag it over here or
the mess dropping all the
eggs on the floor would make. Climb.
Open the door as far as it
will go, stand on your tiptoes and oh.
There's a box of eggs
on the bottom shelf well that was
easier than you thought. You
smile to yourself.
Now what, you've got eggs, frying pan,
the chair makes you high
enough so you can see into the frying
pan when your kneeling
down, you don't want to fall of the
chair. Now butter you've seen
mom do this a million times butter is
easy, now what.
Nothing you've got every thing now you
just have to do it, yeah
do it that's it, OK. turn the stove on,
wait, what if there's no
fire and you gas the hole family and go
to jail, or maybe you
might start a fire. Its almost eight,
on Sunday mom doesn't get
up until after woody woodpecker and
your really really hungry and
besides mom never gassed the family or
started a fire, but she's
big, well so are you, didn't she say
that the first day she made
you go to that stupid school full of
those stupid nuns, she said
" your a big boy now act like one"
FINE, O.K. turn the knob, poof fire
good, now turn it down real
small, now the butter, plop you dropped
it on the floor, scrape
it up that's right now pick the cat
hairs out of it and back up
on the chair and there, oh look its
bubbling, now the egg, well
you can pick the shells out later.
Now you've seen mom flip a million
things a million times, now
all you have to do is flip one thing.
here's the flipper, you
start to get down, wait the fire you
better turn that off, now
where is the flipper,oh yeah a plate
back to the dinning room, oh
yeah toast, that's easy, you do that
all the time, push it down,
now you sit on the chair and think
about mom and this egg frying
business its hard and she does more
then just fry eggs, you sit
there looking at the knees of your
p.j.s, they're really dirty,
this house is a real dump, i like it,
but your a real little
sissy neat thing you even make your bed
on Saturday and now your
learning to cook.
The toast is up, the eggs are cooked
and you didn't even need to
flip them and look mom and dad aren't
even out of bed yet and
look at Scampy (the basset hound)with
his nose sticking out the hole in the screen
and ignoring you. All is safe on the
western front, you sit down
and enjoy the first breakfast that you
ever cooked for yourself.
Enjoy. but remember, if you don't hurry
up and clean up and put
everything away its 8:30 now woody wood
pecker is over and.
Did you hear that.
The telephone didn't just ring did it?