E is for...

Amanda is in!

Eggs

When deciding what my E would be, I had little trouble coming up with a word that has held a lot of importance in my life. I have had a relationship with chicken eggs since I was old enough to walk and to open and close an egg carton. My parents used to load us up in the car almost every night (or it SEEMED like every night) and we would go over to the egg house. My brother, sister and I would drag our feet to the packing table and start our ritual. Adam would take the eggs from the flats to the cartons. Jen would close the cartons. And I would load them up into the cases. Do you know what an egg smells like? I'm not talking about a yummy friend egg you smell in the morning. I'm talking about the smell of the raw egg in the shell. Once you've handled several thousand, you will know what I'm talking about. The one redeemable thing would be our prize at the end of the egg packing adventure where we would walk up the road to Grandma and Grandpa's house for a chewable Vitamin C or a few Angel Food Cake crumbs.

Well, that may not be the only redeemable thing about packing eggs, but it was the only thing I could see at the time. I think my parents used it as ammo when the college-talk came up. If we didn't want to pack eggs anymore, we would have to decide what we wanted to do and go to college and DO IT. I also think packing with my siblings taught us all about teamwork and the importance of working together. I remember if there was a fight or something (usually between my sister and I), we would be stuck in the corner packing our own case of eggs by hand.....and our nights would last twice as long. Packing gave us work ethic. And I'm thankful to my parents for working us and making us realize how cold, hard and smelly the real world can be.

See how sunny and cheery I can be about packing eggs? But, don't get me wrong. That still doesn't stop the gag reflex and the rock in the stomach when I hear someone say those words. My mom even likes to mess with me every once in awhile and asks if I want to go pack some eggs and then laughs when I almost puke.