How To Hard Boil Eggs

The observant among you may be thinking something along the lines of, “I didn’t think he was a Christrian:” and in fact I am not. At least I have not been for approximately the past nearly twenty years. My faith in that particular range of beliefs was already starting to fall apart during high school despite my family and community’s sincere and steadfast efforts to the contrary and getting out into the world on my own took care of the rest of it pretty quickly. As with many people who were newly “Not a Christian” I did go through a phase of pretty explicitly and strongly rejecting anything and everything associated with it and I still feel that way vaguely about things like Christmas (though for quite awhile really due more to the orgiastic consumer culture aspects of it than anything else) but a year or two after Jennifer and I got together I suggested that I might like to color eggs with the kids once they were old enough to have just enough attention span and manual dexterity to make it not also involve repainting the dining room.

Every year since then I have looked forward to coloring eggs some spring-ish Saturday afternoon before a holiday that I otherwise don’t really participate in.

Partly I enjoy spending the time with the kids. Partly I just enjoy the challenge and entertainment of coloring my own eggs (I get to do half to one-third of the dozen). In large part though I do it because I have fond memories of spring-ish Saturday afternoons in my childhood with the rest of the family around the house for once before one of the busiest days, for my family at least, of the year. My dad had planted his Good Friday potatoes and was taking most of the day off in a set of weeks that he otherwise had none. My mom was worrying over getting the house cleaned and everyone’s clothes ready and the food cooked and keeping us kids from maiming each other and keeping whatever other plates spinning that I, as an adult about the same age as she was at the time, only now begin to comprehend.

But really the rush and press of spring and summer is nearly upon us and it’s nice to just sit and color some eggs.