Riding out an egg slump

You never can remember exactly how it begins.

You go into the kitchen to make breakfast. Two eggs, basted; bacon; toast; coffee. You fry the bacon, and crack the eggs into the skillet, and one of the yolks breaks.

So it begins. You don’t think about it until the next day, when it happens again. Then it happens a third time. You start to look over your shoulder. They say you’ve had it when you start looking over your shoulder.

The technique is to tap the egg firmly on the skillet rim to make a clean, straight crack. Then in one smooth motion you part the shell and drop the egg into the skillet. It is a pure expression of confidence.

Suddenly you can’t get a clean crack. You have no feel. You become tentative. The result is a tentative, spidery crack with jagged edges that snag the yolk. With the third failurem you know you are in a slump.

You try everything. You change your grip. You straighten your wrist and cock your elbow. You straighten your elbow and cock your wrist. You shorten your backswing. You change your stance. You stand back from the skillet and up close to it. You practice when you can, but a man can only eat so much egg foo yung.

The aggravating thing, when you are in a slump, is that you never break both yolks. How is it that a person can break one yolk every time for a week? A good breakfast, half-ruined. There aren’t many greater disappointments.

The slump will end. All slumps do. You even know how it will end. You will go into the kitchen one morning and go two-for-two, and that will be the end of it, as if it never happened. You’ve been in other slumps. You know that you just have to ride them out. A slump is always in the back of your mind, but you can’t dwell on it. Your self-esteem can rot entirely and suddenly you can’t even chop an onion.

You have to think positively. You have to think of things that you can do.

Every morning you shave your face and all of your neck without a nick. You can tie your shoes in the dark. You can parallel park. You can type 60 words a minute. At a ballgame, you can shell peanuts and hold a beer between your legs and not spill anything. You can fold burritos so the filling will not leak. This slump is doomed.