Today, I was e-mailing my boss about my upcoming trip to West Africa and the fact that breaking news on our project in North Africa means that I should probably go to both countries in one trip. The timing gets a bit tricky, because I need to make sure to have enough time in both countries to get some meaningful work done, but I start going a little stir-crazy if I'm out on the road too long. And I almost always get sick when I'm in West Africa (see prior posts on food poisoning/dysentery). At the end of this tediously detailed message, I wanted to ask for my boss's approval of my travel plans, and for whatever reason, I decided that the best way to word this request was by asking, "Questions, comments, limericks?"
He replied, "There was a young lady from . . . Sorry, but Minnesota doesn't rhyme with anything."
But I proved him wrong:
The coworker from Minnesota
With traveling plans over quota
Thinks too much time in Benin
Will make her quite grim
‘Cuz they don’t have enough diet soda*.
*(With thanks to my friend "I", who came up with "soda" for the final rhyme.)
My boss wrote back with the suggestion that "green" would be a better rhyme than "grim" for the correct English pronunciation of the country in questions ("buh-neen") and would also be appropriate, given my tendencies to illness there. I'm just so grateful to have a supervisor who helps me learn new things every day!
And to the American citizens whose tax dollars financed this important poetic contribution to ending poverty.
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