I was thinking about you the other day because I was planning to show off.
My wife and I have a weekend routine. It started during COVID but probably should’ve started years before just on general principles.
We have eggs for breakfast. They’re usually scrambled, but she sometimes makes omelets with rubbery contraptions that work in the microwave.
We’ve been known to fry them — always over medium — but that’s a rarity. I don’t know why we don’t do it more often because every time I order eggs at a restaurant they’re fried.
Anyway, we do eggs on weekend mornings, and I’m getting good at cracking them without getting little bits of shell in the yolk or the white.
I’m also getting good at not breaking yolks. Now that I think about it, my history of runny yolks is probably why we don’t fry eggs more often than we do.
But I digress.
Since I was developing skills with two hands, I started experimenting with a one-handed approach.
I’ve seen actors perform perfect one-handed cracks on TV and in movies. I wondered if they used body doubles to pull it off.
My early attempts had eggs all over my hand and shells all in my eggs. In such cases, I use my finger to push the shell to the side of the dish, but it always slides down. It usually takes three attempts if not more.
But not too long ago, the kitchen air felt different. For whatever reason, I could taste success before I even started.
My first one-handed crack was a thing of beauty. Had you been there, you would’ve been amazed.
And that’s about when I started thinking about telling you this story. I usually don’t achieve perfection in anything, but no one could deny that I’d just cracked an egg as well as any egg-cracking champion ever could.
I wanted you to know about my performance, especially after I repeated the feat.
Not one, but two perfectly cracked eggs with unbroken yolks and symmetrical whites sat in the frying pain without a single trace of their shells.
I’m strict about salmonella and make sure to wash my hands after handling raw eggs, but those two breaks were so brilliant that, if I’d felt bold, I could’ve scratched my nose with no fear because there wasn’t a drop of egg on me.
I’d figured out arcane knowledge that only the great chefs understood, and I was itching to share my glory with you.
Then it happened.
I hesitate to go further because it doesn’t speak well of me.
But we shouldn’t only document our successes. Failure is as important as success when it comes to learning and growing as human beings.
The third egg felt good in my hands. You know? It was almost as if it’d been made especially for my palm.
That crack was something too. If you’re an experienced hand at cracking eggs, you know what I mean.
I was about to be three for three, and I was thinking about how I was going to brag about it to you.
Then, for some inexplicable reason, I emptied the yolk and the white into the cup where I’d been depositing my shells.
What happened? I wasted the egg, that’s what.
Why would I do such a thing when I could taste success?
I spent hours contemplating the question and eventually came to a sad but inevitable conclusion: I simply cracked under pressure.
M. Scott Morris is a former editor of The South Alabamian. He’s a writer and editor living in Tupelo, Mississippi.
