How Do You Like Your Eggs?

I think how you like your eggs says more about you than your Myers-Briggs.

I’m serious. Give me thirty seconds at a diner and I’ll tell you something true about you.

People who order their eggs well done — I’ve noticed they tend to crave certainty. They like instructions. Calendars. Retirement accounts. They stack the dishwasher like it’s a personality trait. My brother is one of these people. I’m pretty sure he’s been rationing the same bag of marshmallows since he was fourteen, saving them for some occasion that never comes. Meanwhile I’ll eat mine. And then I’ll eat his.

For a long time I was a well-done guy myself, if I’m honest. Not with eggs — with everything else. I wanted the whole life cooked all the way through. Locked down. No runny parts. No surprises I couldn’t manage. It took me a while, and a couple of things falling apart that I couldn’t put back the way they were, to notice I’d been ordering my entire life well done and then wondering why it tasted like nothing.

Now I like my eggs over easy.

The whites hold together, but the yolk still has a little rebellion left in it. Over easy reminds me of cracked vinyl booths and a jukebox humming in the corner and coffee that never actually goes cold because somebody keeps coming by to top it off. Waitresses who call everybody “hon.” The kind of place where truck drivers and teenagers on an awkward first date and night-shift nurses and an old couple who’ve been splitting the same breakfast for forty years all somehow belong under the same buzzing fluorescent light. Nobody’s trying to impress anybody. Everybody’s just eating their eggs.

I’ve got theories about all of it.

I think men who wear boots and get dirty for a living order theirs over easy. I’ve never once pictured a cowboy asking for poached. But cops? Cops eat scrambled. Maybe firefighters too. They don’t want surprises — they see enough surprises. Breakfast might be the one thing all day they actually get to control.

Over easy reminds me of a life that isn’t overproduced. Grease on the counter. Chipped mugs. Conversations that wander off and never quite come back. People who don’t apologize for taking up space.

I don’t want to live a life that’s cooked all the way through. My relationships. My dreams. My conversations. My eggs. I need a little mystery left in all of it. A little runny.

Because when I actually look at my best moments, almost all of them broke open.

A laugh came out at the wrong time. Somebody told a truth they hadn’t planned on telling. A kiss happened before either person was ready for it. The yolk ran across the plate and got into everything. That’s the stuff. That’s where the life actually was. Not in the parts that went according to plan — in the parts that spilled.

Cooked enough to hold together. Still willing to fall apart.

I think that might be the whole thing, honestly. Not just for eggs. For a person. You want enough structure that you don’t slide off the plate. But not so much that nothing can ever surprise you again.

These days that’s the sweet spot I’m aiming for. Held together. Still a little runny in the middle.

Still willing to make a mess.

John