The Cookware Hero, Part 1

Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Ricky wasn't born with a spatula for a hand. It's important to get that out of the way early to maintain the believability of this tale.

The fact -- the true fact -- remains that Ricky Schowalter lived the end of his adult life with a spatula for a hand. It was acquired after much debate and careful, expensive planning. This, of course, is the only type of planning that could produce such a combination of cookware and human appendage. However, we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Ricky was presented with the opportunity for this unique procedure one day when he, and roughly four dozen other residents of Matty Melt, KA, were engaged in a stunt to bring fame and fortune to their town by creating the worlds largest spinach and feta omelette, thereby assuring them a spot in the Book of World Records and the aforementioned fortune and fame, though not necessarily in that order. Once folded over, the omelette would measure 33 feet long, which is slightly longer than the sentence before this one.

The work began in the summer of 1949, which is to say that that's when the planning started. The first step was to calculate the number of eggs required to accomplish this task. When found, the number was so staggeringly large and frightening that the townsfolk resolved to use larger eggs in order to minimize the number of unborn chicken ghosts that would haunt the elementary school.

That is a reasonable concern.

This is where Ricky came in. Ricky was put in charge of finding the largest eggs possible among all the farms in Kansas. The hunt took weeks and Ricky, who had started the quest highly motivated, was getting tired, partly because he had gained quite a bit of weight by sampling so many eggs for so long. His cholesterol was also dangerously high.

Ricky had looked at literally tens of thousands of eggs, and they all essentially looked the same. He was tempted to simply go home and proclaim that the last farm he had visited had the largest eggs. That last farm didn't really have the largest eggs, as far as Ricky could tell, but the farmer's twin daughters did flirt with him the whole day. That was enough for Ricky, who was incredibly road weary, to compromise the integrity of his mission.

"They're just eggs!" he yelled at no one in particular, particulary because there was no one around on the country road on which Ricky was walking. "I give up! I don't care about the kids being haunted! It's not my probl--"

But then, like Moses discovering a burning bush though not quite as dramatic, Ricky saw it.

Tune in tomorrow for the thrilling conclusion. Well, at least I think it'll be thrilling.

Getting ready for a giant omelette!

Today is "Mozart's Birthday!" Beethoven, Bach, and the others don't get a day.