A waffle and a pancake walk into a bar...or rather a breakfast bar...
It was a typical sunny side up morning and all was well until there came an order of both pancakes and waffles. The egg was appalled as he had never witnessed such a combination. He anticipated the moment of impact, preparing himself for a great dispute between the rivaling breakfast foods. He watched the plates carried out and the rookie mistake of placing them next to each other. If only the waitress knew the trouble she had just started.
The egg observed as the pancakes and waffles took notice of each other, like two predators stalking the other, neither accepting their place as prey.
“Well don’t you look a bit soggy today,” a waffle, clearly the leader, tossed out towards a pancake.
“I see the iron was a little too toasty this morning” a pancake quickly rebutted. They eyed each other, waiting for another insult to be delivered. The egg, of course, kept his mouth shut as he did not want to get dragged to a side.
“This order was clearly a mistake. No one would ever choose to compare the obvious superiority of waffles to pancakes. You guys are much too flimsy and weak. You probably don’t even know the difference between maple syrup and fruit syrup.” The whole stack of waffles burst into raucous laughter while the pancakes painfully received the sting. A few particularly sensitive pancakes took it a little hard and started to cry. Just as one brave pancake at the top attempted to get a word out, the waffle struck again.
“You know, I still don’t understand why pancakes even exist anymore. I mean, sure, there are a few nostalgic people who prefer pancakes. I’ll give you that. But really they just haven’t experienced the complete versatility of a waffle. I mean, come on. Sure, you’ve got your typical syrup, cream, fruit, or even chocolate. But that’s textbook. We’ve got ice cream sandwiches, breakfast sandwiches, doughnuts, and even burgers! You don’t hear people ordering pancake burgers, do you?” He paused, waiting for a challenger, but there was no reply. “I didn’t think so.”
Most of the pancakes by now were past their anger and had moved to sadness. They didn’t understand the rudeness of the waffles when they had done nothing wrong. They hadn’t chosen to be ordered. They hadn’t chosen to be made into a pancake instead of a waffle. But the waffles wouldn’t back down and continued to belittle them.
Every once in awhile, that top pancake would try to defend himself and his kind: “This is so ridiculous! You guys think you’re all that and a bag of chips but really you’re just a modified version of us. We literally come from the same ingredients. We just look a little different. But that doesn’t make you any more tastier than us. So why don’t we just drop the matter.
Seriously, we could actually be friends if you didn’t have to focus so much on the fact that we don’t have your checkerboard. And if you weren’t such blockheads.”
Despite these reasonable arguments, the waffles continued to ridicule the poor pancakes. They delivered more and more insults, each one harsher than the last. Finally, the pancakes had experienced enough bullying and began to fight back, violently.
A group of three exceptionally large pancakes hopped off the stack and headed straight for the knife. The waffles, recognizing this mobilization, gathered their own crew and sent them to the fork. Squaring up, the waffles assumed position directly across from the pancakes.
“I’ve had enough of this! You’ve left us no choice. The only way to stop you is to end you.” The pancake leader stared down the waffle leader with eyes full of cold syrup.
“Bring it on, you tasteless disks.” The waffles were a bit nervous as the pancakes had never challenged them like this, but they wouldn’t show it. The battlefield was silent as each side waited for the other to make the first move. Meanwhile, the egg, still a bystander, watched as the drama overcooked their once appreciated balance of a breakfast meal. He knew that the waffles were being rude to the pancakes and he felt bad, at first; however, they started the violence, and he doesn’t condone that kind of unruly behavior, especially not at his table. Finally, he decided to take a stand.
“You know what? You guys have been soooooo busy insulting each other that you’ve both become soggy. Seriously, I don’t even know where the syrup went. Never mind, that’s not the point. I wasn’t going to say anything but your yapping has gotten about as dry as your ingredients.” Both sides of the table stared in shock at the egg. They had never been confronted by a cooked egg before and didn’t know how to respond. So the egg continued.
“When I first came to this table, I was a perfectly cooked, warm, tasty, sunny side up egg. And then you two came along. Normally, I don’t like to be in the middle of things - unless it’s a sandwich - but you really need a wake up call. I don’t want to lecture but you’ve given me no choice.”
Although neither side put down their weapon, both the pancakes and waffles turned their focus away from each other and aimed it at the egg. Eggs were normally subdued and quiet so they knew that this one had something important to say.
“I’m so tired of listening to you jibjab at each other. Waffles, there is absolutely no need for you to be insulting the pancakes like that. You’re like bacon, thinking you’re better than everyone else because you get ordered more often. You’re not. There’s plenty of days when you haven’t been ordered at all, but we don’t bring that up, do we? And pancakes, seriously? I was almost rooting for you guys until you grabbed the knife. Is violence really necessary? We could have had a peaceful resolution but then you had to go and make everything ten times worse.”
The egg took in a deep breath, now that he was really starting to boil with anger.
“It comes down to this you guys: there are always going to be variations of everything. Heck, I literally come in so many different shapes and sizes that one could say that I’m better than all of you. Now that I think of it, eggs are really underappreciated. I mean, I’m in any delicious cookie or cake you’ve ever eaten, I make great sandwiches and omelets, I can even be eaten on my own. Despite this, you don’t see me putting those other eggs down, or other breakfast foods for that matter. The truth is, we’re all made of the same things, we all serve the same purpose, maybe a little differently, but still the same. And after all that we end up in the same --”
Just at this moment, the egg was pierced by a trident and swallowed by the dark sea.
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