Elemental Farce

Mateo Burtch

Cartoon by Mateo Burtch ’82

Ava Gadro and Iodine were dining in Cerium’s the other night when she remarked, “Manganese, oh manganese, will you look over there at that silicon gallium?” Iodine glanced across the fluorine at this gallium; she was slightly hydrogen, and talking to her was this cadmium who tried to cesium her. 

Ava said, “That would beryllium more than Iodine could barium. Water boron! Should we call a copper and prevent a scandium?”

“No,” said Iodine, “let her sulfur. She brought it on erbiumself. Uranium too tender. And besides, if we call the coppers, they’ll radium the place.”

But Ava is a Good Samarium, so she took matters into her own hands. She stepped up to the cadmium and said, ”Listen, you big oxygen, uranium leave that gallium alone!”

With that, the cadmium turned quite palladium and replied, “Why don’t you mind your own bismuth?”

Without another word, Ava krypton him on the chin, and down went the cadmium to the fluorine… out gold! Ava, you know, is quite strontium. Then Ava said, “Stannup, you big gypsum!”

Need Iodine tellurium that we got out of there in a hurry and called our carbon. We rhodium around for a while. Finally, Ava said, “Just a mineral. When that cadmium fell on his acetylene, he must have bit his tungsten....” But Iodine was gadolinium that the whole phosphorus was over, sodium Iodine counted tin and then said, “Erg,” and that was the end of it.

—Michael Lamm ’58

Editor's Note: Mike reports that he flunked out of Reed in 1957, partly because he wasted time on riffs like this. A lifelong car nut, he became managing editor of Motor Trend and, in 1978, started his own automotive publishing company. Mike and his family live in Northern California.