Early Monday morning after the Easter weekend, 1994, I got to the lab and started on my research work for the day. And our lab technician, William, swaggered in and wore a smile from ear to ear. I greeted him, "How are you? William." "Oh, just peachy," he replied. "How was your Easter weekend? Did you do anything fun ?", I added. "I sure did. We went to Charlotte to have a Civil War reenactment. We had tons of fun.", he beamed. ( Just so you know, our technician was an American history buff.) Then he asked me, "How was your weekend?" "We had fun too, I took my daughter to the Easter egg hunt. As this was her first Easter weekend after she came to US, she was very excited and had a lot of fun on the egg hunt.", I said. Then William commented, "I bet, she had a ball on the egg hunt." "No, she brought back a whole basket of colorful Easter eggs, but i did not see a ball in it.", I responded. William just burst into laughter after my reply, leaving me puzzled.
Acknowledgement: William, thank you very much for exposing me to a lot of colloquial idioms and American slang during my beginning years in the States. You never ceased to amaze me with your rich and expressive spoken language.
