Passover ends Sunday, and with it my annual stiff-arm refusal of hard-boiled eggs and all their manifestations.
I don’t like egg salad.
That’s it, end of column. Thank you very much for reading, please exit to your left and enjoy your visit with the other fine features in today’s Chicago Sun-Times.
Still, here?
Oh all right then. We are bound by the limits of the form, aren’t we? Ann Landers once left the last quarter of her column blank, when writing about her divorce, as a tribute to a marriage that ended prematurely. Very dramatic, though it was an extraordinary circumstance. Someone who made her living telling others how to manage their lives couldn’t just shrug when something so vital in her own life went off the rails. Smart.
My marriage is fine, as far as I know. The egg salad though . . . I don’t like eggs hard-boiled, either. Which makes for an awkward moment at Passover, when my wife passes me the bowl of hard-boiled eggs, taking one for herself with a flourish of anticipatory joy. She really loves hard-boiled eggs.
I shudder with visceral revulsion and quickly pass the bowl, averting my gaze as if it held kitty entrails. I do not, however, say, “I avoid these eggs because hard-boiled eggs are gross — bland white goo surrounding a yellow sphere of chalky disgust.”
I don’t, in fact, say anything at all. Because I have learned a vital truth that, judging from my email, many adults have not mastered. One I would like to pass it on to you. Ready?
You are not the final arbitrator of all things. No one is. I’m certainly not. While an educated person, proud holder of a degree from Northwestern University, my tastes are nevertheless not the template quality can be measured against. What I like, and what is good on some objective scale, assuming such a scale exists, are two separate things.
This shouldn’t be a revelation. Yet so many just assume that what they like, and what is indeed good, bear more than an accidental relationship. So leap they do, aided by God, whom I’m beginning to define as: “the imaginary cosmic force that people conjure up to add weight to their own personal biases.”
I wish more people understood this. On Sunday, I wrote about the utter greatness of “The Book of Mormon” musical, laying out, necessarily in abbreviated, canyon-floor-rushing-up-at me form, why I think it’s a superior work of art. This prompted a number of readers to write back along the lines of, “I saw ‘Book of Mormon’ the other day and it was the worst thing I have seen in years.”
Period. Well, stop the presses. I’ll go tell the producers and they’ll close the show. Some writers, perhaps aware that something more is required, offer up rationale — it was “sophomoric,” which I take as the five-dollar word meaning it has swears in it. Or “racist,” which, thanks in part to the vigorous efforts of the Rev. Jesse Jacksons of the world, has gone from meaning “an unacceptable, even illegal act of racial hatred” to “anything that involves race that I don’t like.”
Now, a solid case could be made for either complaint — that obscenity ruins a work by jarring tender sensibilities. Or that stating frank truths about any particular people — such as suggesting that Uganda is a poor and violent place where many people suffer from AIDS — is unacceptable racism in a world gone mad to flatter everyone at all times.
But my correspondents didn’t say that — they just said categorically they didn’t like it, often that they didn’t like it because it wasn’t good. And I’m not embarrassing them by name, because to do so seems mean, since they are guilty of such a common lapse.
As the years grind on, I’m starting to see we are all ego junkies, so busy shooting up our own opinions that, as junkies will do, we ignore the rest of the big blue world. I’m as guilty as anyone. I can’t tell you how many times, talking about opera, I’ll be whining about seeing Berg’s “Wozzeck” in 1994, and what a soul-shattering experience of badness it was, only to be truly surprised when the person I’m talking to juts out his lower lip and says, in a small voice,“But I love Berg.”
You lose friends that way. And boldly thundering your opinion, without any sort of explanation, assumes people care, and they do not, particularly if they don’t know you. That’s important enough to write a column about, I think, because if society is a continuum, where on one side is a hive of selfless bees all laboring mightily to make the communal honey, and on the other is Robinson Crusoe, padding along his island alone, we have swung about as far toward Crusoe as you can get and still occasionally catch sight of another person. Our politics are a disaster, our schools in crisis, faith a shambles, in large part — I believe . . . in my opinion — because each of us has become so enamored with ourselves, our tastes, our sensibilities, our lives, that we forget there are other people on this trip too. So enjoy your egg salad. I’m sure it’s wonderful stuff.
—Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 12, 2013
That’s it, end of column. Thank you very much for reading, please exit to your left and enjoy your visit with the other fine features in today’s Chicago Sun-Times.
Still, here?
Oh all right then. We are bound by the limits of the form, aren’t we? Ann Landers once left the last quarter of her column blank, when writing about her divorce, as a tribute to a marriage that ended prematurely. Very dramatic, though it was an extraordinary circumstance. Someone who made her living telling others how to manage their lives couldn’t just shrug when something so vital in her own life went off the rails. Smart.
My marriage is fine, as far as I know. The egg salad though . . . I don’t like eggs hard-boiled, either. Which makes for an awkward moment at Passover, when my wife passes me the bowl of hard-boiled eggs, taking one for herself with a flourish of anticipatory joy. She really loves hard-boiled eggs.
I shudder with visceral revulsion and quickly pass the bowl, averting my gaze as if it held kitty entrails. I do not, however, say, “I avoid these eggs because hard-boiled eggs are gross — bland white goo surrounding a yellow sphere of chalky disgust.”
I don’t, in fact, say anything at all. Because I have learned a vital truth that, judging from my email, many adults have not mastered. One I would like to pass it on to you. Ready?
You are not the final arbitrator of all things. No one is. I’m certainly not. While an educated person, proud holder of a degree from Northwestern University, my tastes are nevertheless not the template quality can be measured against. What I like, and what is good on some objective scale, assuming such a scale exists, are two separate things.
This shouldn’t be a revelation. Yet so many just assume that what they like, and what is indeed good, bear more than an accidental relationship. So leap they do, aided by God, whom I’m beginning to define as: “the imaginary cosmic force that people conjure up to add weight to their own personal biases.”
I wish more people understood this. On Sunday, I wrote about the utter greatness of “The Book of Mormon” musical, laying out, necessarily in abbreviated, canyon-floor-rushing-up-at me form, why I think it’s a superior work of art. This prompted a number of readers to write back along the lines of, “I saw ‘Book of Mormon’ the other day and it was the worst thing I have seen in years.”
Period. Well, stop the presses. I’ll go tell the producers and they’ll close the show. Some writers, perhaps aware that something more is required, offer up rationale — it was “sophomoric,” which I take as the five-dollar word meaning it has swears in it. Or “racist,” which, thanks in part to the vigorous efforts of the Rev. Jesse Jacksons of the world, has gone from meaning “an unacceptable, even illegal act of racial hatred” to “anything that involves race that I don’t like.”
Now, a solid case could be made for either complaint — that obscenity ruins a work by jarring tender sensibilities. Or that stating frank truths about any particular people — such as suggesting that Uganda is a poor and violent place where many people suffer from AIDS — is unacceptable racism in a world gone mad to flatter everyone at all times.
But my correspondents didn’t say that — they just said categorically they didn’t like it, often that they didn’t like it because it wasn’t good. And I’m not embarrassing them by name, because to do so seems mean, since they are guilty of such a common lapse.
As the years grind on, I’m starting to see we are all ego junkies, so busy shooting up our own opinions that, as junkies will do, we ignore the rest of the big blue world. I’m as guilty as anyone. I can’t tell you how many times, talking about opera, I’ll be whining about seeing Berg’s “Wozzeck” in 1994, and what a soul-shattering experience of badness it was, only to be truly surprised when the person I’m talking to juts out his lower lip and says, in a small voice,“But I love Berg.”
You lose friends that way. And boldly thundering your opinion, without any sort of explanation, assumes people care, and they do not, particularly if they don’t know you. That’s important enough to write a column about, I think, because if society is a continuum, where on one side is a hive of selfless bees all laboring mightily to make the communal honey, and on the other is Robinson Crusoe, padding along his island alone, we have swung about as far toward Crusoe as you can get and still occasionally catch sight of another person. Our politics are a disaster, our schools in crisis, faith a shambles, in large part — I believe . . . in my opinion — because each of us has become so enamored with ourselves, our tastes, our sensibilities, our lives, that we forget there are other people on this trip too. So enjoy your egg salad. I’m sure it’s wonderful stuff.
—Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 12, 2013
Looked like 2025. Politics a disaster, schools in crisis... Eggs were probably cheaper. From my favorite fictional character, Red Green- "We are all in this, together."
ReplyDelete"Not my cup of tea."
ReplyDeleteThat said, I mash the hard boiled egg yolks with Dijon mustard, Hellman's mayo or equivalent, & a dash of pepper. Mound in the egg half, sprinkle with paprika and capers. Chives optional.
delish
DeleteI saw the 1994 Wozzeck. It was torture. Of course, as you say, it's all a matter of personal preference. Das Wasser ist blutig ... blutig!
ReplyDeleteI understand that my personal dislike of Wozzeck is my own. I totally get it. But I'll add one additional observation: when I saw it at the Lyric Opera House, it was on a very cold night. The building thermodynamics are apparently engineered to factor in the body heat of the patrons. And SO MANY of the patrons left at intermission, that my husband and I returned to a nearly empty section. So I had to sit through the 2nd half of a disliked opera (friends told me later it was because Berg wrote it in 12-note and it was atonal), while also feeling quite COLD! I felt abandoned by all the others in my section!
DeleteAs for hard-boiled eggs: it was an Easter tradition in my family to not only dye them, but to also have "egg fights". Someone would challenge another, and then strike the pointy end of their egg against the pointy end of the other. The "loser's" shell would crack, and the egg that survived would be the 'champion'. The kids in my family loved egg fights, but none of us wanted to eat the cracked eggs. This led to a big bowl of egg salad later in the week, which we also did not like.
Thumbs up to the egg fights, Jill! Among the highlights of the Easter celebrations of my youth. I don't know what happened to the eggs afterward, except that I didn't eat them...
DeleteI've seen "The Book of Mormon" twice. A friend suggested I see it more than once because folks are so busy laughing the first time, they miss a lot of the jokes.
ReplyDeleteMy mom felt a bit left out that my brother and I went to see it. I suggested to her that as someone rather devout in her faith, she would *not enjoy the humor.
I was amused to see that it had a run in Salt Lake City!
I would advocate for deviled eggs, but the joke would get tedious, so I'll just move along.
ReplyDeletedeviled eggs are the best
Deleteas a child I was a finicky eater . as an adult ive taken to eating what im served. while there are certain foods I will not seek out or have heaping helpings of ive gradually come to enjoy some foods more than I used to and discovered others I might not have. not a big fan of hard boiled eggs but deviled their not bad
ReplyDeleteAs a lifelong picky eater ( excuse me, sufferer of avoidance restrictive food intake disorder) I had to learn my likes don't rule the world. That said, the commenter's description of their egg salad recipe made me throw up in my mouth.
ReplyDeleteThis blog could be rerun weekly. It's forever relevant.
ReplyDelete(in my opinion)
john
My sister was a picky eater, and had "food issues"...as it's called now. Clearly remember the countless squabbles she had with our mother, who seemed to think Sis was far too skinny, and needed to gain a lot of weight. Then they argued and fought over the stuff she was forced to choke down. It was called Wate-On, and resembled a chocolate shake. But Sis has remained thin all her life.
ReplyDeleteMy mother was not the greatest cook in the world, unlike her own mother. Still, I greedily and dutifully ate everything she made and served, even if some of it was burned, or tasted like slop. And I loved egg salad, and hard-boiled eggs. Still do. Just had one. Hey, it was in my Easter basket.
"Give him food! He's a growing boy!" my grandmother would exclaim. When I gobbled my breakfast too quickly, so as not to miss my bus, my mother sometimes admonished me to slow down. And then, for reasons unknown, she would add: "You would eat shit if I put it in front of you. " Wisely, I never replied. Just kept on snarfing.
oh, Grizz! I know there is no such thing as a "schizogenic mother", although it was touted as an hypothesis in the 1970s. Yet reading your comments, I fear there may have been an underlying family dynamic for eating disorders!
DeleteI hope you and your sister both have healthier relationships to food now.
My kid sister and I have grown apart over the years, especially since my mother's death almost 13 years ago. Our mother feared, and predicted, that we would become estranged after she was gone. "Don't worry, Ma...ain't gonna happen, " I assured her. But I knew better.
DeleteConsequently, I have no idea what Sis eats, or what she likes and dislikes, or how much she consumes. We haven't seen one another since the funeral, in 2012. Would like to break bread with her, even though she might criticize what I chose to eat, and how much of it. I would do my best to swallow (nyuk nyuk) my annoyance. But the last time I proposed a visit, she suggested Skype. Which tells you both all you need to know, and how long ago that was.
Sad truth is, she just doesn't care much for me. I bullied my only sibling, and she has neither forgiven nor forgotten. We both have health issues that accompany being seventy-somethings, and there's a very good chance this will only end one way. And you know what it is.
Boiled eggs and egg salad are fine. Runny, sunny side up are gag worthy. Scrambled or omelet is okay, if well done. You are wrong on this one. ;)
ReplyDelete