Tuesday, October 8, 2013

The One With Random Thoughts About Pears #slice2013


Every Tuesday, Ruth and Stacey, host Slice of Life at their blog, Two Writing Teachers. If you want to participate, you can link up at their Slice of Life Story Post on Tuesdays or you can just head on over there to check out other people's stories. For more information on what a Slice of Life post is about, you can go here

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It's not a secret that I'm a huge Jon Klassen fan. Not only is he a brilliantly, creative person, he's a really nice guy. I was lucky enough to attend the Newbery-Caldecott-Wilder Banquet at ALA this year in Chicago and be there when Jon accepted his Caldecott award for This Is Not My Hat. If you haven't seen or heard his Caldecott speech, it is heartfelt but also entertaining, letting you see his sense of humor and humbleness at the same time. (Also, he compares This Is Not My Hat to Edgar Allen Poe's Tell-Tale Heart...which totally and completely blew my mind! *ahem*) 
A clever speech, right? I love his description of the hooded Caldecott committee scrutinizing his book.

Over the weekend, one of Jon's tweets caught my eye and I clicked over to his Twitter feed. What did I discover? Some super awesome random thoughts.

Jon's random thoughts/tweets made me think of my own random thoughts. Sometimes I wonder where they come from and if anyone else has ever wondered that same random thought. At the time, it seems incredibly important but then I usually shake my head and tell myself to come back to Earth or simply forget it even crossed my mind. 
I love toast. Toast leads to warm, melty pools of butter, or globs of jelly, or gooey peanut butter. Toast can also lead to sandwiches that are just a little better because their crunchy and warm. I'm all about toast. There are even toasters that create images on your bread...and all thanks to someone somewhere who took the time to invent the toaster in the first place. Good job, toaster-inventor-man.
One time, I had lunch with a friend at Chipotle and the young man who took our order had an awesome energy about him. He seemed like it was the best moment of his life to be scooping us our black beans and fajitas. I remember sitting down and thinking how great I felt knowing I was going to eat a veggie bowl that was made by that happy dude. I couldn't stop talking about how happy he was. I really wanted to go and give the guy a high five and to tell him that his attitude was awesome. I didn't though. I still wish I had...
First, Honey I Shrunk The Kids is such a classic movie. Second, while I've never spotted anyone from Honey I Shrunk The Kids out and about in real life, I often am positive I've spotted someone famous. Just yesterday at the Bears game there was a woman in a trench coat with large, dark sunglasses and a Bears hat on sitting two rows in front of us. She didn't simply sit there and watch the game. She had her glasses lowered down on her nose and she continuously grabbed the collar of her trench coat and pulled it up over her face. With the hat pulled low, there was no way I could see who she was. It was hard for me to concentrate on the game though because I was convinced this woman was some kind of celebrity trying to remain incognito amongst the commoners at the Bears game. And then at the end of the game, when the Bears lost, she stood up, offered her hat to the man behind her, lowered her collar, put her glasses in her pocket and marched out. And she wasn't any celebrity I recognized. It was so strange.

To get to my random thoughts about pears...today, I ate a delicious green pear that was perfectly ripe. As I ate it, I thought about the shape of a pear. Why is it that a pear is shaped like a pear while an apple is round? What makes a pear need to be shaped like a pear? Isn't it interesting that a pear isn't just round like an apple? I mean, it could be round, but for some reason it's not. 

And then as I ate the pear, I saw that once I had eaten all of the yumminess, I was left with a core that looks exactly like an apple core. On the inside, it's not like a pear has a pear-shaped core, it's the same as an apple. 

And then I wondered if the amount of edible fruit on a pear is equal in volume to the amount of edible fruit on an apple...except that the edible fruit on a pear is distributed in it's pear-shaped way so that it looks different (on the outside only, mind you) but really, it's all the same amount of fruit.

And I thought, I'm sure there's some kind of fancy math to examine that but that would make my head hurt so I tossed my pear in the trash and moved on with my life.

Just some random thoughts on this wonderful, October Tuesday!  Do you have any random thoughts to share? Perhaps about toast, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, or pears? I would love to hear them! Hooray for random thoughts!

And if you want to follow Jon on Twitter, his Twitter handle is @burstofbeaden.

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