Every Egg Has a Story

Yesterday, when I started up my last class of the day, I became distracted by an unfortunate situation. On one student's desk lay the sad remains of his egg babies, twins in fact, in their wrecked cardboard crib, half-naked and smudged with filth and broken yolk. What adventures these egg babies must have had in a mere four days of a Health & PE assignment.

Their young father looked at me with mild regret, "I barely know how this happened." Oh, the inherent risks of being a teen parent. Of course, this the whole point of the lesson. Yet as I stared, both stunned and entertained by the sight, I found an entirely new angle for this annual tradition. 

If only the egg babies could talk.

Once a year, we teachers see our class sizes grow exponentially. Students file into class and make grand pronouncements. "It's a girl!" or "I named mine Allen." Many show off the faces they've sketched upon their shells. And my pun-lovers make themselves known, in case I hadn't already discovered their talent, with comments such as,"You're cracking me up," and, "Don't you think this assignment is egg-celent?"

In any task assigned to hundreds of adolescents, there is a wide range of interpretations, from the eggs so pampered, they get by without a scratch, to the eggs who don't appear to be eggs at all by the end of the week. Doesn't every egg deserve to have his or her story told?

It is by this question that I have hatched a plan. Egg parents everywhere, you are hereby challenged to give voice to your hard-boiled charge. Document their short lives for posterity, for it may have been brief, but it was most definitely not dull. Imagine what readers might learn by seeing the world through their little pencil-drawn eyes.