"Don’t Count Your Chickens, But Count Your Chicken Wings”

January 21, 2011

I love this bit of advice.  I was contemplating my day, and thinking about the wisdom I might have acquired, when this bit just came to me.  I knew I had to share it with you.

Today’s Bit of Advice…..

"Don’t Count Your Chickens, But Count Your Chicken Wings”

Don’t count your chickens.  Don’t plan on having a snow day off from school until you hear the man announce it on the radio.  Don’t spend your birthday money until it shows up in the card.  Don’t buy a dress for a wedding until you get the invitation. 

How many times do we start to count our chickens before they hatch?  Our mothers and grandmothers would remind us to be careful of that practice but it’s easy to do.  We want things to happen (or not happen) and we almost believe we can make them happen if we think about it often enough or wish it hard enough.  But those chickens won’t hatch unless they are meant to hatch.  All the wishing and thinking won’t hatch them quicker or more successfully. 

That said, make sure you count your chicken wings.  Huh?  How is this connected?

I was the Hot Lunch Lady at the kids’ school today.  (In case you haven’t heard my discuss my volunteer lunch position before make sure your read my title with emphasis on the word “HOT”.  I’d much rather be the HOT lunch lady than the hot LUNCH lady – LOL).  I only do lunch once a week and I try to pick the days when they serve foods that aren’t too popular.  That way I have fewer plates to fill.  (Note:  Don’t ever sign up to help on pizza day).  Today’s menu was Chicken Wings or Hamburger.  The restaurant that delivers the food puts an indication on the top of each container of how many items to put on a child’s plate.  The chicken wings container said “5 per plate” so that was what we did – for the first lunch period.  Then we started looking skeptically at the remaining wings and counting up the orders for the next two lunch periods.  Five per plate?  Hmmm…..  Didn’t look like we would make it.  I put on a food service glove and started sorting and counting wings.  20, 30 , 40, 50, 55, 58 wings.  And we needed 85.  Uh, oh.

We started making Plan B and decided we had enough to give three wings to each child in the next two lunch periods hoping the first group wouldn’t tell that they had received more.    Sounded like a plan that would work out well.   Except one boy forgot to bring a lunch today.   Well, let’s give him three wings and we’ll split someone’s goldfish crackers cup into two helpings to share.  We had just enough extra wings for him and the remainder was exactly the number we would need for the rest of the children.  All good, right?  Until a lovely young girl dropped her plate on the floor.  We had nothing left to give her.  The other mom said (jokingly) “we could just rinse them off.  They were only on the floor for a few seconds.”  Though we knew it was a joke, the rest of us actually thought about it a few minutes.  In the end, we found there was one extra hamburger leftover and we substituted that for the wings.  Problem solved.

The restaurant should have counted their wings.

We should have counted the wings before starting to serve.

Everyone should count their wings before starting a project, making a purchase, taking a trip, etc.  Make sure you have what you need and a little extra.  It’s good advice.

Who knew that chickens would provide such inspiration today?

Hope you enjoyed the read.