Heaven Must Be Missing an Egg Roll

A brilliant idea inspired by a popular song

I was with my posse of friends having lunch at our favorite Chinese restaurant. It was the Seventies. I was still young, stupid and poor. The main course had not yet been served but we were all having an egg roll as an appetizer. I love egg rolls. I could eat nothing but egg rolls for a meal.

This particular restaurant did not play soft Chinese music on its sound system. Instead, they piped in the top 40 pop radio station. So there we were eating our egg rolls, listening to popular music and talking when suddenly…

…it happened!

A new song began playing on the radio. It was the very popular song, Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel, by the one-hit wonder group, Tavares.

“Oooh, I love this song,” said someone at the table.

Then, as though guided by some unseen forces, I raised the half-eaten egg roll in my hand up into the air and proclaimed, “No! Heaven must be missing an egg roll!”

The table erupted in uncontrollable laughter. This almost never happens when I say something. Usually when I try to say something funny I get pelted with rotten fruit — or everyone runs for the hills. But I wasn’t even trying to say something funny. It just came out of my mouth of its own accord.

And then a light bulb went off over my head. I couldn’t see it but I could feel it.

I addressed my friends, “I just had a brilliant business idea! Wouldn’t it be cool to open up a restaurant that served absolutely nothing but egg rolls? We could have twenty different kinds of egg rolls but nothing else; just egg rolls! We could call it, Heaven Must Be Missing an Egg Roll.”

There was more laughter but everyone at the table agreed that it was a good idea.

But I was young, still in college and I didn’t have two nickels to rub together. I had eaten plenty of egg rolls but at that point in my life I had never cooked one. I had no idea what was involved. I seriously fantasized about the brilliant idea for weeks but I could find no way to act on it. Eventually I forgot all about it.

Fast forward a decade. It was now the Eighties and I was in some mall in some city — I don’t remember which mall or which city. I walked into the food court looking for a bite to eat when I saw it…

There was a tiny little fast-food restaurant with no more than ten feet of counter space. It was called, Heavenly Egg Rolls. There were about twenty people standing in line to buy egg rolls. It was the busiest restaurant in the food court.

I walked closer to look at their menu board. It turned out that they served nothing but egg rolls! No meals, no drinks even; JUST EGG ROLLS!

I got in line and bought an egg roll asking the non-oriental counter person about the business. He said that business was booming. They currently had eleven locations and were hoping to go national.

I found a table facing the egg roll restaurant and sat down to eat. Was I mad that someone ‘stole’ my idea? Yeah, but only for about two minutes. Mostly I was just amazed to see ‘my’ idea manifested — and even more amazed that the idea was working very successfully! It really was a brilliant idea even if I was not making money on the idea.

When an idea lands in your noggin and you don’t or can’t act on it, the idea will soon fly away looking for someone else’s noggin. I realized that ideas are like butterflies. The world is like one of those butterfly enclosures with thousands of butterflies flying about — all looking for a noggin to land on. For brilliant ideas to come to us we need to see and stay open to the butterflies, eat out a lot and keep listening to popular music.

How awesome is that?

Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved. Writings of White Feather

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