Have a Nice Guilt Trip by Lisa Scottoline, Francesca Serritella Read Free Book Online Page A

that don’t match.
    I mean, let’s be real. Yellow and red? Nobody looks good in yellow and red, except Ronald MacDonald.
    He’s single for a reason.
    Worse, in winter, the leaves on the trees actually fall off. That’s definitely an engineering problem. I feel pretty sure a tree engineer would fix that, no sweat.
    Also the sun.
    Don’t get me started on the sun. It’s supposed to be yellow, but it’s too bright to tell the color. In fact, it’s so bright that we have to buy dark glasses to even be around it.
    Also the sun is hot, which can be a bummer. It makes us feel listless and uncomfortable, then we have to turn on the air-conditioning, or at least decide whether or not to, which can be a problematic choice for certain people, involving money and self-esteem, oddly intertwined.
    Not that I know anyone like that.
    And also in winter, the sky could use a good engineer. There are times when it changes from blue to a very boring whitish gray, then actually breaks up and falls to the ground in tiny, cold pieces that we all have to clean up.
    Needs work.
    Sky engineers should get on it. It’s like the sky doesn’t even stay up, which is a major engineering defect. Cantilevers, buttressing, and scaffolding may be required, and lots of it.
    Really, lots.
    Or worse, sometimes the sky loses its blue color, turns gray, but doesn’t break up and fall to the ground, right after I spent hundreds of dollars on a green machine to help me clean up the pieces.
    That’s a lot of green, even for a green machine.
    Who knew that colors required so much engineering? If you ask me, green is the color most in need of engineering. I wish those engineers who were trying to fix the tomatoes would fix the economy, but never mind, what do I know?
    Let’s move on to my second point.
    Having been astounded to learn that tomatoes have engineers, I was also amazed to learn that they had genes, too.
    Who knew tomatoes were so busy?
    I grow tomatoes, and I haven’t given them the credit they deserve for their rich inner lives.
    To be honest, I had no idea that food had genes, at all. Just like I thought you needed an engine to have an engineer, I thought you needed, like, blood and a heart to have genes.
    It’s hard enough for me to remember that a tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable, but now I’m expected to know it has DNA, as well?
    Bottom line, I’m bad at biology. Anyone who’s slept with me will tell you that.
    But now we know that tomatoes have genes, this opens up new job opportunities, namely for actors. Think of all the new TV shows this could create, like CSI: Tomatoes, where they collect tomato DNA to catch the killer tomato.
    In fact, we could have murders for every fruit, then spin it off to vegetables, too.
    To Catch a Salad Shooter.

 
    Call of Jury Duty
    By Francesca
    When I received the summons for jury duty, I didn’t know what to expect. Turns out, jury duty is a lot like high school.
    While our instructor was taking attendance, I felt like I was back in homeroom. Everyone was sleepy, grumpy, and seated in a collective slump. There were posters on the wall picturing a perfectly diverse group of smiling people, only instead of “Knowledge is Power,” it had fine print about doing your civic duty.
    I don’t know how much motivation you need to do something that’s compulsory.
    The instructor told us to correct him if he was mispronouncing any names then proceeded to mispronounce all of them. There was that one person who waited three beats before saying “Here,” and the person who made a point to say, “Present,” instead. Each time he came upon a no-show, I had to fight the urge to say “Bueller, Bueller?”
    When a short lunch break was announced, there was a stampede out of the courthouse. Eating on campus was clearly uncool.
    After a quick hunt for cheap fare, I ducked into a sandwich shop. The place had only a few café tables, all taken. A man sitting alone said I was welcome to join him, and after