rotten eggs | All that makes you…

There is a reason I have a sense of humor about my life with our three boys. If I survived the ridiculous childhood I had, they will be fine. I am going to share with you one of my own childhood stories. Sit down and I will try and paint a mental image and while you laugh at my misery, please remember that nothing is funny until the smell of rotten eggs is gone.

Our family usually hung out at “The Farm” all day on Sundays. We lingered in my grandmother‘s massive kitchen cooking dinner from all that came from the garden and the barn. My Mamaw made a cake from scratch and without a recipe. They had three daughters and the daughters had six granddaughters and eventually, much later, a grandson. Picture my childhood being like an episode of “Designing Women“.

When I was about eight my grandmother told us girls to go get some fresh eggs for a cake. I now know, since their wisdom is immediately bestowed upon we women the moment we become mothers, that they were just getting rid of us.

My grandparents always had a couple hundred chickens, among other animals. I sincerely thought I was Laura Ingalls. I had long brown hair and I loved a dress, (still do) but I fancied myself a tomboy. My cousin, who is about the same age, and I headed off towards the chicken and cow barn.

Since we were sent on a “busy” mission and the eggs had already been gotten for the day the chicken’s nesting boxes were empty. We kept looking and finally found a nest that was full. I held up the hem of my flowered sundress and my cousin loaded up all of the eggs and then I held them close.

I walked across the cow pasture, climbed a fence (as the gate was to heavy to open) walked across the yard (so as to shake them up really good). When I walked in the kitchen, proud of the major score of eggs we found, NOT in the chickens boxes on the wall but in the corner in a nest on the ground my grandmother gasped, “My Lord child! You didn’t get those eggs from that old nest by the cows your Papaw was supposed to get rid of, did you?!!!”

And then the eggs began EXPLODING! Exploding in my sundress and the stench of rotten eggs was less offensive than the dead baby chickens that were all over me when I let go of the hem of my sundress which was less offensive than being stripped naked in front of my entire family and hosed off in the front yard.

It took twenty-five years before I would eat an egg. Go ahead and laugh, I am.