This is another grandmother story, one that happened about three years ago but good enough to remember well!
My daughter was out of town and I was babysitting. The girls’ dad hadn’t left for work yet. Olivia was still in bed. Little Justine, aged 2-1/2, asked me if she could have an egg for breakfast. I had seen her mom scramble an egg using the microwave so I figured this would be an easy breakfast. I told her that would be fine.
I took the carton of eggs out of the fridge, set one egg on the drain board and turned to put the carton away. At that very moment Justine shrieked at the top of her lungs, "I CAN DO IT MYSELF!" and before I knew what was happening, she grabbed the egg, ran to the kitchen table and smashed it on the edge, causing yolk and white to fly across, down and around the table, chairs, rug and wall. Her big hazel eyes fixed on me as if I had been the one that had done the deed. "SEE WHAT YOU DID?" she shrieked again, chin a-quivering and steam shooting out of her ears, and ran off upstairs to tell her dad what Grandma had done. (Two and a half is a bad age to expect taking responsibility for one's own actions.)
In reconstructing the story with their dad, I learned the two little granddaughters had come to enjoy hard-boiled eggs for breakfast. The girls are notoriously poor and picky eaters, and keeping pre-cooked eggs on hand helped the girls with their breakfasting process. To differentiate the hard boiled eggs from the uncooked, both of which were placed in the egg carton, mom and dad cooked the hard-boiled eggs with some onion skin, which dyed the shell brown. Neither the girls nor I knew of this little trick, but when Justine grabbed the egg, she was supposing it was one of the hard-boiled ones. Obviously it was not.
Anyway, while Justine was upstairs tattling on me, I was trying to find, and wipe up, all the raw egg of any color spattered around their kitchen. I even called in their dog, a master at the art of eating food scraps off the floor, but the dog turned me down flat! When Dad came downstairs with a still-steaming Justine, he told me about their system. In my kindest way, I said that Jer and I always wrote HB on the shell of our hardboiled eggs. Dad reckoned that it was easier our way.
In spite of all this, I had a hard time not laughing through the whole episode, except when I was down on my arthritic knees trying to find runny egg white on the cold, hard white designer tile floor. While I was thus occupied, Tini’s dad offered her a carton of yogurt instead, which she happily accepted in place of an HB, and during the eating of the yogurt with sprinkles, she decided to be friends with me again.
My daughter was out of town and I was babysitting. The girls’ dad hadn’t left for work yet. Olivia was still in bed. Little Justine, aged 2-1/2, asked me if she could have an egg for breakfast. I had seen her mom scramble an egg using the microwave so I figured this would be an easy breakfast. I told her that would be fine.
I took the carton of eggs out of the fridge, set one egg on the drain board and turned to put the carton away. At that very moment Justine shrieked at the top of her lungs, "I CAN DO IT MYSELF!" and before I knew what was happening, she grabbed the egg, ran to the kitchen table and smashed it on the edge, causing yolk and white to fly across, down and around the table, chairs, rug and wall. Her big hazel eyes fixed on me as if I had been the one that had done the deed. "SEE WHAT YOU DID?" she shrieked again, chin a-quivering and steam shooting out of her ears, and ran off upstairs to tell her dad what Grandma had done. (Two and a half is a bad age to expect taking responsibility for one's own actions.)
In reconstructing the story with their dad, I learned the two little granddaughters had come to enjoy hard-boiled eggs for breakfast. The girls are notoriously poor and picky eaters, and keeping pre-cooked eggs on hand helped the girls with their breakfasting process. To differentiate the hard boiled eggs from the uncooked, both of which were placed in the egg carton, mom and dad cooked the hard-boiled eggs with some onion skin, which dyed the shell brown. Neither the girls nor I knew of this little trick, but when Justine grabbed the egg, she was supposing it was one of the hard-boiled ones. Obviously it was not.
Anyway, while Justine was upstairs tattling on me, I was trying to find, and wipe up, all the raw egg of any color spattered around their kitchen. I even called in their dog, a master at the art of eating food scraps off the floor, but the dog turned me down flat! When Dad came downstairs with a still-steaming Justine, he told me about their system. In my kindest way, I said that Jer and I always wrote HB on the shell of our hardboiled eggs. Dad reckoned that it was easier our way.
In spite of all this, I had a hard time not laughing through the whole episode, except when I was down on my arthritic knees trying to find runny egg white on the cold, hard white designer tile floor. While I was thus occupied, Tini’s dad offered her a carton of yogurt instead, which she happily accepted in place of an HB, and during the eating of the yogurt with sprinkles, she decided to be friends with me again.
1 comment:
Okay! That story is too funny!!!
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