Eggs and stubbornness

When I was in the second grade, I was in the local newspaper. The week prior, I had won our class "safe egg drop" project. We had to create some kind of carrier for an egg that would protect the egg when it was dropped from a ladder. I think I remember my dad helping me pack a small box with newspaper and something else to cushion the little egg. I cannot remember exactly what it was. When my teacher dropped my box from the ladder, I ran up to my box and carefully unwrapped it. The little egg was still safe and sound and I was the only student who did not have only a box full of yolk.

The next week my teacher pulled me and my friend Trusti (that is not her real name) from class and said that a reporter was there from the paper to interview me about my egg and to take a photo. The teacher gave me a cardboard box with tape wrapped around it. I didn't realize what it was for. After I met the reporter, she said she wanted me to throw the box into the air and she would take a picture. I did not think to protest the unethical nature of this phony re-enactment (which would play in the newspaper as though it were a photo of the actual contest). I was only seven years old and shy beyond belief. I just did as I was told.

A few days later the photo of me and Trusti appeared in the paper, along with a caption about how I had won the egg contest. My dad bought seven copies of the paper on his way home from work. I was famous. Later that year, Trusti would announce that she could no longer be my friend because I was stubborn (a word she no doubt heard her mother use about me). I had only heard the word "stubborn" in reference to a goat. I thought she did not want to be my friend because I was a goat. A very confusing time in my life. In retrospect, I think she just could not handle my stardom and being second fiddle to the egg champion.