About to meet their ghastly fate

When I was little I loved hard boiled eggs. I remember us having them in the fridge on a regular enough basis that if the mood struck all I needed to do was ask if I could have one. I liked to cut them up like a delicacy. We had 2 kinds of wire egg slicers that were as much fun to play with as the eggs were fun to eat. I learned to wield the slicer with as much precision as a violinist tuning their instrument.

I would make a single pressing cut for simple slices. I would pick the whole sliced job up and turn it to slice it into tiny sticks. If I were feeling particularly ambitious I would then take all or part of the stick egg and turn it again so that I had tiny, eensy, weensy little egg bits cubes.

I'm not so crazy about slicing and dicing my eggs these days but as I was preparing some eggs to boil this weekend I sat and thought about my egg-slicing youth. And my tea set. And sitting at my tiny table in the kitchen and being so excited to see one of the marked eggs emerge from the refrigerator shelf.

In my family we marked the boiled eggs with a sharpie or some such marker. I was about to make simple hatch marks to note my ovoid protein packs but got a little carried away. I thought about what faces they might make if they knew their fate. I was also, of course, tempted to just give them all beards. Perhaps next time.