Re-Emergence Day

One year, my mom decided to make the traditional hard-boiled eggs "more interesting" by getting some quail eggs instead. Have you ever had one? First off, they are tiny. This turns out to be a blessing, given the gamey taste. The worst part was she didn't adjust the cooking time, so they ended up like rubber.

Yes, we could still celebrate the emergence of the egg from the shell and the yolk from the white, but no one actually ate them. Even with one of the standard toppings (in my family, being in the northeast, it was hot sauce or whole-grain mustard- no hate, southerners!), no one took more than a tiny nibble before pushing them to the side and moving on to the pearl onions.

One year my mom somehow found an emu egg(!) and cooked it up – just the one, I think they cost like $20 or something? – but she got the time all wrong and when we cracked it the whole thing just kind of dumped out on the table in a gloppy mess. EXCEPT THERE WAS A LITTLE EMU FETUS IN THERE! It kind of ruined the whole egg bowl, no one wanted to get a strike and have the egg crack open and see another bloody mess, even though I guess that's kind of uncommon for chicken eggs.

My little sister is allergic to eggs. Most years, that meant Cadbury Creme Eggs instead, though one year, trying to be cheeky, my aunt bought a whole pile of those gummy candies that look like eggs over easy!

Once, a cousin of mine brought their own eggs (about 6 of them) and left them on the traditional egg platter. They said their eggs were hard-boiled, so they didn't need to be cooked into the main omelette; they could just stay as-is, in the shell, until the egg re-emergence phase of the dinner.

But on the 2nd course or so of the main dinner, we heard some cracking and peep-peep-peep sounds. The eggs were hatching! There were live chickens!

My cousin was laughing and laughing. "A Re-Emergence Day miracle!" they kept saying. They nearly fell over.

I still have no idea how they manage to time the chicks hatching so well. I've asked and they haven't told me.