i don’t know whether the chicken or the egg came first, but somewhere in there, there was a rooster

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Below is a conversation I had, twice, with a former roommate.

Matt: You’re a vegetarian, right?

Me [making eggs in the kitchen]: Technically I’m a pescatarian. I eat fish, but not beef or poultry or anything.

Matt: Then I guess whether or not you eat eggs depends where you stand on abortion. Like, when does life begin? You’re eating a fetal chicken.

Both times, I explained the miracle of life: An egg has to be fertilized before it can turn into a chicken. I wasn’t eating fetal chicken. I was eating the equivalent of a chicken’s period. (Sorry, I hope you’re not eating right now.)

Work Cathy and I were discussing how much or little science education we received in elementary school. I remembered building a rock collection in kindergarten and weighing guinea pigs with little metric scales in Mrs. Graham’s sixth grade class. I also remembered how, in tenth grade biology, Mr. K wanted to start the year off with sex ed, even though our textbook wouldn’t get to “family life” until Chapter 15. Mr. K was a little bit of a pervert.

But I guess I learned where babies come from. Now that more people I know are having them and my ears have perked up to such things, I’m amazed by how much I still have to learn. The fact that one’s period serves as more than just biblical punishment only truly sunk in recently. It makes the cramps marginally less sucky.

I try to buy free-range eggs these days, and I’ve noticed that a lot of them have a tiny spot of blood in the yolk. In other words: fertilized. Those free-range chickens really like to free range, if you know what I mean. I always fry those eggs up anyway.

Comments

Peter Varvel said…
Omg, I have always called the ovum that we eat "chicken periods" for years, now!
This is so un-scientific of me, but I've always wondered why we couldn't cross enough of our mammalian genes with bird genes in order for human women to just lay a neat, conveniently mess-free shelled egg of their own every 28 days or so.
Is it because we would be tempted to boil/fry/consume those too?
And is even saying/writing/merely thinking that just waaay crossing a line? :)
October 11, 2010 at 9:09 PM
Cheryl said…
We probably could genetically engineer human ladies to lay eggs, but a mass conspiracy by the tampon industry is preventing it.
October 12, 2010 at 5:35 PM
Jesi said…
sorry, this is a bit off topic, but i have some friends, whom i've told i'm a vegetarian several times, who still offer me food with meat in it. seriously, i'm about to punch them, because they are good friends and i would think they would remember that about me. maybe they have memory problems. we went to australia, and one of them could not believe i wouldn't try kangaroo. but she still pestered me, how about aligator, how about ... argh!

i don't eat eggs very often but i have oftened wondered about eggs and vegetarianism. so you def. helped clear that up a bit.
October 13, 2010 at 2:45 PM
christine said…
i thought that a chicken only had to be fertilized once (in her life) in order to produce fertilized eggs (forever). sadly, the internet tells me that's not quite how it works.
October 14, 2010 at 8:15 PM
Cheryl said…
The internet has burst all kinds of bubbles for me. But I think it's created a few too.
October 17, 2010 at 1:36 PM
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