Tales from WannaBea Farm

Joyce Stark “How’d you do that, Mama?” my son asked, picking up another egg and examining it closely, looking for some kind of opening in the egg. “No, no, that’s just the way they are, I didn’t do anything to it”, I answered as the other son picked up still another egg to examine, before cracking it into the bowl. Again, there were two yolks and three pair of astounded eyes looking from the eggs to me.

“Wow, Mama, how’d you do that”, they asked again, in unison. They just would not believe that I hadn’t somehow manipulated the eggs and that it was a trick. The oldest left the room and returning with a magnifying glass proceeded to examine the next egg, turning it over and over, studying it from every angle, and finally cracking it into the bowl. Staring down at the double yolks in frustration, he asked again, “How?”

I had brought the eggs home from my job at a catering company so that I could show my sons, never dreaming of the response they would receive, much less the questions they would lead to. They just would not believe that it wasn’t a trick. Could it possibly be because I was always giving them silly answers to the questions they asked, such as telling them that windmills were “cow fans to keep the cows cool”, before urging them to go to the library and find the answers for themselves? I’m a firm believer that if you research it yourself that you will remember it better than just being told. But tonight it was too late to go to the library and they wanted answers. Now remember this was “BC”, before computers. So I tried to explain that had these eggs been allowed to hatch they would have produced identical twin chicks.

“Twins”, they asked, “how does that happen?”

“Well, when the egg shell gets two er, uh, hm, eggs into it instead of one, you get twins”, I answered, as I started setting the table in an attempt to distract them, “now get your homework done while I get supper ready.”

“Wait” my oldest son said, “Aren’t all twins identical?”

They were not going to be distracted, they wanted answers and they wanted them NOW.

Ohmigosh, I just wanted to show them some double yolk eggs! What had I gotten myself into? Now they were asking about twin people and how they happened to be. Nooooo, no, no, I didn’t want to do this! This was their daddy’s job, but he wasn’t there. But I had also been a firm believer that if a child was old enough to ask a question then they were old enough to hear the answer.

And so we had “the talk”. The talk that every parent dreads. Finally, their questions answered to their satisfaction and my discomfort, they started on their homework while I prepared supper.

Scrambled eggs!