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.

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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.