(After writing that title and staring at it for a minute, it occurred to me that this could very much sound like it was a post about an *ahem* bathroom…incident. But I assure you it’s not. This story does not end in the bathroom. Nor does it begin in the bathroom. It doesn’t even transition to the bathroom at any point in time. So rest assured, there will be no Tales of Poo…for You…today.)
Moving on!
The other night…well I suppose if we’re being technical, what with the massive lapse of time and all, since my last post…the other night, about a month ago…No wait. Hold the phone. Let me back up.
Dorian is the Master Craftsman, when it comes to hard boiled eggs. Now, you stop. I know what you’re thinking. “Uhh, Craftsman? Master? Hard boiled eggs?! Pretty sure it’s not that hard to boil an egg.” And on the surface level, I’d be forced to agree with you. I mean there’s not that much thought involved. Fill a pan with water, turn on burner, add eggs, let boil, The End. So let me modify: Dorian is the Master Craftsman at the Art of Perfecting the Hard Boiled Egg.
He’s got it down to quite a science. It’s like he’s got this internal timer and he just…knows when the eggs are done. And then he does this thing where he taps the eggs to crack the shells ever-so-gently when they are mid-boil. And that too! He can just sense when the eggs are just hard-boiled enough that cracking the shell will not impact the integrity of the final product. The first time I saw him pick an egg out of the boiling water to crack the shell, I thought maybe his shell had been a little cracked. If you know what I’m saying. “What are you doing?!” I asked…a little shrilly…just a little.
An aside? Dorian and I communicate on opposite ends of the spectrum when any sort of tension enters the picture. When I get frustrated–particularly when we’re driving or when the situation at hand involves something that is about to happen and I feel the need to stop it–I get ex-tuh-remely impatient. My normal patience level (which is negative 2,096,234) to the n-th degree. So I need a response that contains a satisfactory solution in 4 words, flat. Example – Me: Which road do I turn on? Dorian: It’s three roads up behind that big tree and…. Me: Which road is it? Dorian: It’s the one behind that big tree with the sign… Me: What is the flipping NAME OF THE ROAD?!
And poor Dorian. Poor, poor, sweet, wonderful Dorian. When he gets flustered (or, you know, pressured for an answer NOW NOW NOW), his words come tripping out of his mouth like an overly intoxicated college student trying to muster up sobriety enough to walk, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other, on the three yellow lines blurrily criss-crossing their way through his vision.
So when I walk into the kitchen and think I need to stop him before not-quite-hardened egg yolk comes shimmying out of it’s newly cracked shell, you can bet his answer was quick and firm. “Just TRUST me, OKAY?!” And wouldn’t you know? He fulfilled my 4 word limit.
And the next morning, the brilliance of his method became screamingly evident. I rapped the shell against the counter a few times, picked at a broken piece, and the rest of the shell slid off in one piece. I had never had a hard boiled egg that peeled that easily. I assume it goes without saying that from then on, I kept out of the kitchen when that boy was fixin’ the eggs.
So, with that background, let’s venture back to that night. About a month ago. Lay off me! I’ve got my reasons for being scarce!
Dorian was working his magic with the hard boiled eggs. He’d finished and was letting the water cool a bit before taking them out of the pan, and I began marveling about how impressed I was with the way the eggs peeled. I regailed him with the story of how quickly and easily my breakfast came together in the morning. And at that point, he jumped up, realizing he’d forgotten the key component for the Easy Peel. He’d forgotten to crack the eggs! So he turned the burner back on. I wondered why he didn’t just crack the shell, rather than boiling them again. I was worried that they’d be overly-boiled. But I’d learned my lesson. Eggs were his thing and I was keeping my mouth shut.
About twenty minutes later, we made our way to bed and quickly fell asleep. I didn’t think twice about checking the burner, because, if you will recall…I mind my own business when it comes to the hard boiling of the eggs. And wouldn’t you know it? An hour and a half later, I woke up to the heart-attack inducing sound of a shot being fired IN OUR KITCHEN. I flew out of the covers, throwing on every single light in my path. On my way to the kitchen, I could hear the savage sizzling and popping of the eggs that had once been engulfed in a water bath. I grabbed the pan off the stove, flipped off the burner and filled the pan with water.
Everything ended up being fine. The pan was slightly damaged, but still usable. Our nerves were more than a little frazzled, but hey, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right? In the weeks that followed, we were a little (read: Crazy, psychotically) anal about making sure everything on the stove was turned off, and…I’d be lying if I said that Dorian didn’t receive a few teasing reminders to ensure that all burners were off whenever he left the kitchen. But that is neither here nor there. The next day, when I came home for lunch, I discovered the egg responsible for the volatile awakening. It had exploded, clean in half, throwing the yolk into the air…and across the kitchen. That finding started a week long adventure of the great egg-shard scavenger hunt. There were egg particles everywhere.
About a week later, I experienced the jarring realization that – I had run straight out of the bedroom, into the kitchen under the assumption that either a.) shots were being fired or b.) something had been dropped in a way that could only indicate that someone had done the dropping. I can’t imagine I would have escaped a scenario like that, unscathed. And it really worried me that my knee-jerk reaction was to go straight into what could have been a dangerous situation. But then I remembered that I had smelled burning and that was why I’d run straight to the kitchen. So…at least the mad dash into the ”dangerous situation” was along the lines of something that I could be pro-active with. There’s not really any logical reason to run head first into a robber with a gun.