As the 29th of April marks the beginning of Golden Week, a week long collection of four holidays, Showa Day, Constitutional Memorial Day, Greenery Day and Children's/Boys' Day, and the 1st of May is Mother Goose Day, here's a mash of the Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs I wrote while struggling to start a family back in the day.
Farmers Mr. and Mrs. Plenty had a goose that laid golden eggs. The eggs allowed the Plenties to increase the size of their property, tech up their house, wear expensive clothes, buy any number of vehicles, and raise an infantry of animals that won them awards at the county fairs. But there was one thing the eggs could not buy.
“If only the goose could lay us a child,” said Mrs. Plenty, “then we would have the voice of a child fill our barns.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Mr. Plenty. “Everyone knows that a goose cannot lay a human child. I’ll negotiate with Lenial at Stork Industries and have him get us one.”
“I’d love to hack the algo,” said Lenial when Plenty approached him, “but you know the algo takes on a random life of its own. You could maybe talk to the Luckies. They have five children and they seem to have a knack for getting them.”
“You could try growing cabbages,” Lucky told Plenty. “Storks are more likely to deliver babies to farmers who have invested in patches.”
The Plenties grew a vast field of cabbage patches and waited hopeful every spring when the stork drones were most active, dropping children here and there. The Plenties were patient. They waited. And waited. But five seasons after the storks continued to pass them by, they abandoned the idea of cabbage patches and travelled to Japan.
“The Japanese know a thing or two about children,” said Mr. Plenty.
The Plenties met many people in Japan, and indeed they knew a lot about children. In one of the conversations, a local told the Plenties about a boy who was born from a peach. This was highly unusual but this was Japan so they set about on a search in all the rivers. They searched in rivers in the Hokkaido Highlands and in the Nagano Alps, but no matter where they looked there were no river peaches that carried children. Saddened, the couple gave up and went back home.
“We’re just not lucky,” Mrs. Plenty told Arbeit, the handyman who was installing a new ventilation in their barn back home.
A ray of sunlight shone through the slats of the vent that morning. The shadows made it appear as if the goose was surrounded by books.
“If we can’t have a child, at least we can train the goose to read books,” Mr. Plenty told Arbeit. “Then when our Goose can no longer lay golden eggs, it can read at the county fair. That should raise a lot of capital.”
“I shall fetch a boy to teach the goose to read,” said Arbeit who, like Mr. Plenty did not know that a goose’s bill was ill fit to pronounce the human language.
Alas, when the good boy came and read to the goose, it did not learn to read out loud. Mr. Plenty was plenty disappointed but Mrs. Plenty quietly beamed. For now, as the boy continued to read to the goose, the voice of a child filled the barn.
