Erasers and rice share use, taste

When I was in fifth grade, my science teacher decided to give everyone a chicken egg so that we could examine the structure of an egg. She specifically asked us to find ‘a small, elastic white ball in the egg whites.’ Everyone found that white thing except for one friend of mine. Being driven by her dream of one day becoming the female version of Buzz Lightyear, my friend decided that she would not let the absence of that small white thing in the egg white make her fail her fifth grade science class and therefore interfere with her great plan of meeting Martian representatives, so she cheated – she cut off a small piece of her eraser, dipped it into the egg white and came to her science teacher with the excitement equivalent to that of Madame Curie’s many years ago. ‘Look! Look! Teacher! I finally found the white thing!”Well done, now put that egg in boiling water so that you can eat it for a snack. We don’t want to waste eggs, do we?’ the twisted, gluttonous grade school teacher said. No! We don’t want to waste eggs, and we really, really don’t want to waste erasers – Even many years after that incident I am still very much intimidated by the combination of erasers and eggs, because I am convinced that the piece of egg-covered eraser my friend ate went straight up to her head and erased everything up there. That’s the best explanation I can come up for her, hmm, uniqueness. And having such fear for eating erasers, it took me one whole month to summon enough courage to try the rice they serve at Danforth, our wonderful cafeteria, despite my love of rice – ‘there’s no sincerer love than the love of rice’ – no offense to the great cooks at Danforth, that rice really doesn’t look like anything near erasers at all, it just carries the reputation of tasting like erasers. Anyway, I figured that I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, I got that rice and I tried it out. And to my surprise, which was equivalent to that of Caesar’s when Brutus did that thing to his back, the rice was not bad. Not bad at all, I must say. The cooked rice I got from Danforth has a very natural white color, with this beautiful, pearly shine. It has excellent color and texture, and it is indeed very elastic. It’s even kind of bouncy – if you get really bored you can probably juggle with a grain of Danforth specialty rice and play mini basketball with salt and pepper. And the smell – oh the smell – is so incredibly nice. And the best thing of all is that this rice erases the pencil marks to the last bit. You can write all over your math book with some dark pencils and this rice will get all the pencil marks out. They’re wonderful! Danforth rice is wonderful! Oh, but why didn’t I eat the rice? I am not sure about that either, but I think it was probably because I was already full from eating erasers with Moo Goo Gai Pan earlier that day. Having eaten the cafeteria rice, I honestly can’t taste the different between rice and erasers anymore so I just did myself a favor and used up my closet full of erasers. Hey, it doesn’t put a dent in my tiny declining balance!Wang can be reached atewang@campustimes.org.