Friday, March 9, 2012

Fairy Tale Friday: The Goose with the Golden Eggs Pt. 1

link to original here
For those unfamiliar with this story, this is a pretty good link to get you started.

Now indulge me here please. For many of us, the closest we’ve ever been to a real goose is when we’ve gone to feed the birds at the local city pond.

Have you ever noticed that regardless of how “domesticated” the geese are, they will be the first ones to chase you with their broad wings spread out, flapping angrily, their loud scary honking right behind you with their sharp beaks snapping, for at least half the length of the pond? The ducks don’t do that. What’s up with the big guys, huh?

Anyway. Let me change things up a bit with this folktale. Say I give you, free of charge and just because I like you, a machine that every morning clinks out a piece of gold about the size of a goose egg.

Imagine a large gumball machine, or one of those square vending machines at grocery stores you can get trinkets and fake tattoos from. Only instead of a gumball, out comes a solid gold goose egg. Again, for those of us with nothing to reference this information with, here’s a visual of a goose egg compared to a chicken egg:

link to original here

I called an appraiser about this (totally played up the incognito bit; homework for today’s post was all kinds of fun) and he said it would depend on a lot of things – the weight of the piece, whether it was solid gold all the way through, blah, blah – but on the fly he would price it anywhere between two and three thousand dollars. Maybe more. He’d have to see it to give me a true price.

So one piece of gold, worth upwards of three grand rolls out of this machine, into your happy hand, every morning. Talk about the best part of waking up, eh?

“How long will it do this?” you ask me.

I shrug my shoulders, “I don’t really know. Sorry. Indefinitely?”

So chances are, the machine could stop tomorrow. Or maybe it’ll keep going until you’re on your death bed, and then you hand it down to a close relative who asks, with puzzled look, how long it’ll clink out the golden orbs. Whereupon you shrug your shoulders like I did, saying, “I don’t know, really. Sorry. Indefinitely?”

But what if…just what if? You were to take apart the machine to see how it works? It couldn’t be that hard, could it? Just to see if you can find the source of all that gold, and then have thousands, hundreds-of-thousands, maybe even millions of dollars worth of gold all at once in your hand. Rather than having to wait day by day to receive the eggs. Or not receive them, because again, you have no idea when it will stop.

link to original here
What if you could reproduce the machine? Awesome, no doubt, eh? Then you could make money off the eggs, and off the machines you create from it too. You could sell the machines, or you could keep them for the extra eggs, or both.

Then again, what if you took it apart and it just broke? No more eggs, no more nothing. Ugh, could you imagine? I'd be so, so... I don't even know the word. "Grumpy" doesn't even come close.

Would you do it? Would you crack open the machine? Or would you just accept the daily offerings of golden nuggets, glad to have them, heart full of hope that they'll continue to come indefinitely?

Vote (look up, top-left for new poll) until next Thursday, March 15, and then Friday our story will continue.


 Total pages logged as of today: Visit my First Draft -- Deb Stats page to find out

Moment of Magic today:

I'm falling short here. I've had a bad day. Anyone? Want to share? I'd very much appreciate it.



9 comments:

  1. Moment of Magic today? My little boy reminded me that he gave his grandparents some silver elephant napkin rings at Christmas. He's two and a half. It's magical to me how much he can recall and sweet he can be. Hmmm, I'm trying to think of something really magical and not coming up with anything! I'm pretty square these days!!!
    Liked the goose egg story. I think I'd take the egg, appreciate it, put it somewhere safe, and hope, but not count on another one the next day. Yup - I'm pretty square!

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    1. No, no, your moment of magic isn't square at all. That's exactly what I mean, and what I needed to smile.

      It was the details -- the elephant, the napkin rings, grandparents, his age...Alpha is about that same age too and isn't it amazing, somewhat surprising, how they can come up with these little memories that to us seem important but so easy to forget? Thank you.

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  2. I want to say that I would patiently wait for my daily offering... But, let's face it, that is false. I'd get one of my machine savvy brothers to pull the darn thing apart.

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    1. Whaaat? You have a blog? Awesome. Somehow this makes everything a little shinier, even though you haven't updated it for a couple of *coughs* days.

      So. I know what you mean about wanting one thing and doing another. Though with your specific brothers, being as savvy as they are, they might acutally figure the dern thing out, eh?

      **Funny note: when I saw your profile picture, before I realized it was you, I thought, "Huh. My friend has a window kind-of like that. This reminds me of a story she once told me..."

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  3. I would probably take them daily for a few months or so (that would be a lot of gold) and then perhaps try to reverse engineer it to see how it works. If it breaks, I still have a great stash. If I can replicate it, my stash will be even bigger!!

    When you get a chance, stop by my blog for your award!!

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    1. This is a really great idea. I hadn't even thought through it like that, but it's definitely thinking outside the box. Safe, but not at all sorry. Nice.

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  4. If you reproduced the machine too much, gold would lose it's value... -shastie

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    1. True, and interesting point, that, huh? Things are only valuable when there aren't very many (or there's at least the illusion that there aren't very many).

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  5. I love this thinking spot. I will now be considering it for the rest of my day. I know what I should do, what I would want to do, and what I think other people think I should do. Probably what I would actually do lies somewhere in between all of those.

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