Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time there was a set of copper pots and pans.  They had been lovingly acquired, one each Christmas over a period of several years, from an upscale grocery store called "Queen Anne Thriftway".  Each one bore the mark of its homeland - "Made in France" - and of the store that had imported them.

For the first few years of their lives, their mistress lovingly polished them.  They were proud and shiny.

Slowly, their lives changed.  Their mistress decided that it was more important to do something called "commuting" than to maintain their luster.  After a few years, they looked like a handful of old pennies.

They continued to slave away in the hope that one day their mistress would be reminded of how beautiful they could be.  They had been, after all, the inspiration for the orange-y wall color in the kitchen.

One day a fire-breathing dragon came to reside next to their nest on the wall.  They knew that their time would soon be at hand.

They teamed up with the dragon to prove themselves and to remind theiir mistress of why she had purchased them in the first place those many years ago.  They distributied heat evenly, simmered easily, and seared new foods while showing that their years working with the electric dragon had left them with solid, flat bottoms.

And so it came to pass that their mistress, while avoiding real cleaning one day, decided to scrub them and return them to their former glory.

The pans and lids and pots rejoiced!

But not the cranky saute pans.  They dug in their heels and were kind of jerks about the whole affair.

This pair ganged up in the mistress when she was at her most tired and sore from scrubbing the others.  They decided that they had worked too hard to get dirty.  They weren't ready to be shiny again quite yet.

She vowed she'd return for them one day soon.

The end.