Parenting Rule #1

Since before I had children, I've always maintained that my number one goal in raising kids would be to try to avoid becoming the main subject of their future therapy sessions. Everyone's a little screwed up, but no one should ever have to be screwed up because of something their mom did or didn't do. That is why tonight, I had to suppress my gag reflex and eat a deviled egg.

I should mention my relationship with eggs, I guess, since I know not everyone feels the same way about them that I do. I'm really a little bit grossed out by eggs. It's not a taste issue; in the past I have actually quite liked the hot, runny yoke of a poached egg on toast. And back when I allowed myself to eat such things, I was especially fond of the crunchy edges of an over-easy egg that had been fried, as my dad does, in bacon grease. 

It's not a moral issue; I'll eat a chicken, and when it comes right down to it, I don't think cows and chickens feel particularly exploited in the transaction of giving up their milk and eggs in exchange for free food and protection from predators.

It's the idea of eating an ovum of another animal that has me a little queasy. I've heard eggs called "liquid chickens" before and that doesn't even capture the full grossness of it for me. Eggs are a little on par with rocky mountain oysters, in my opinion. They're part of the reproductive cycle. You're eating sex, and not in a good way. It's an embryo, for crying out loud.

Most of the time I have the mental fortitude to overlook this minor shortcoming of eggs. I cook with them. You can't make a creme brulée without separating a few yolks. I'll even sometimes eat them outright, as long as it's disguised or covered up so that I don't have to look at the sheer egg-ness of it. For instance, scrambled eggs in a breakfast burrito are fine with me. Smothered in green chili on huevos rancheros, also acceptable. Hard boiled eggs are right out. Deviled eggs are even worse, because on top of looking like an egg, they also (again, in my humble opinion) taste like crap.

That said, the kind and wise person knows that one should never reject a gift from a child.

Jake is in a cooking class at school and today was egg day. He's 8 and sweet and still says stuff like, "Mom, the chamber of love I have for you is wider than space." I want to keep it that way. Thus, when he offered to make me dinner using his newly acquired recipe for deviled eggs, I found it kind of impossible to discourage him. He took a single (thank god) hard boiled egg that he had made in class, which had been sitting in his backpack, unrefrigerated, for probably 3 hours and made, with his angelic, dirty little hands, a deviled egg. He requested sea salt to season it. I ate it and gushed on and on about how delicious it was, fully willing myself not to get food poisoning, make a face, or gag. 

His bashful, blushing grin made it entirely worth it... until he announced his intention to make me breakfast tomorrow with his other new recipe: egg salad.