Wednesday, August 20, 2008A few months ago, Ernie placed an enormous Rubber Ducky atop my work monitor. It’s more than a foot in length and almost a foot in width. It squeaks too. Who else but the real-life Ernie would know where to buy such a thing?
It’s quite the conversation piece. A woman from another department says, “Oh Jake. I bet you want to take a bath with that duck, don’t you? Yeah, I’d like to take a picture of you in the tub with your big duck.” If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she is hitting on me.
Sometimes, Ernie throws things at my duck. I’m not sure if he’s aiming for the back of my head, but if he is then he’s a terrible shot. On occasion I’ll come into work and find the big duck missing. It magically reappears after Ernie asks me where I think it can be. Also, my chair falls on its side when I am away from my desk for more than a few minutes. Sometimes it moves to another area of the department all on its own. How peculiar.
Ernie loves to play "The Isaac Asimov Super Quiz." He usually reads the questions out loud so he can accuse me of cheating if I answer correctly. Sometimes other people play with us. He reads the questions from a website then everyone writes their answers down on a piece of paper. At the end of the quiz, Ernie reads the correct answers aloud and we tally up our points. It’s fun, I suppose, if you like being accused of cheating.
Ernie always scores the highest. I remember when he got a perfect score on the subject of “Nursery Rhymes.” It made me think of little Ernie snug as a bug in a rug wearing a pair of blue zip-up footsie pajamas, listening wide-eyed to his angelic Mama‘s soothing bedtime tales. He sips warm milk and sporadically wets the bed. He hugs his Mama goodnight with his sticky jam hands. That cute little scamp!
I wonder how old Ernie was when he got his first giant rubber ducky.
Listen to the audio recording here: http://media.libsyn.com/media/jakespage/Ernie_Ducky.mp3
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