The Perfect Egg ACDC - Back In Black Camping? This is one hell of a popular summer activity and if you have not been camping you must try it. I spent a week end camping with about ten or twelve very good friends back in the late seventies. One of the things that always amazed me about my friends is their ability to sleep in, regardless of the temperature inside their tent. On a perfect summer's day the inside of a tent is about 90 degrees and ridiculously humid well before eight o'clock in the morning. Usually you have consumed too much beer the night before which robs the chances of having any kind of freshness to the air inside the tent. You feel like you're in a bag of bread that is rotting in a store window somewhere. I am automatically forced to rise prior to this point and it does not matter what kind of hangover I have I just can't stand it. I guess it could be a kin to claustrophobia, who knows? Our camping spot was a relatively remote location that we traveled to by boat. It was perfect because we could behave as we wished without aggravating anyone that didn't know us. On this one particular morning I crawled out of my tent at about seven AM to a glorious day. The sun was blazing, the lake was calm. I felt great, I felt happy and lord I was hungry. Everyone else was sleeping soundly, ignoring my melodic interpretations with the exception of one person. Deuce Staggart! Was he stirring to get a better ear on my singing or to put an order in for some breakfast fixings? Not a chance. He needed a smoke and he was indeed a little on the grumpy side. No problem, I thought to myself, I'll get him around with my good nature. Now Deuce is a great guy don't get me wrong. He is a little wired and he can fly off the cuff emotionally sometimes but usually we just let it fly as a "Staggartism". You know water off a duck's back 'cause "hey, the guy doesn't really mean it". He is probably one of my more creative friends on the humor front. As I was making a fire and getting things ready to prepare my breakfast we started chatting a line of nonsense. While we chatted I began the cooking process. Let me tell you now, this is a miracle cooking story. I do not consider myself anything special in the kitchen but I'm ok with breakfast. I was not aware that I was about to perform an incredible cooking feat, even under the harsh cooking conditions one encounters while camping. I heated my pan over the fire I had going. I place a dab of butter in the pan. I watched the butter melt and as it started to sizzle, I broke an egg and turned towards the pan. Now if this were a movie, this would be the moment you would hear the chorus of beautiful voices as the camera zooms in on the egg falling from the shell to the pan. The egg settled in the pan and my jaw hit the sandy beach. "Deuce" come here I said. He came over to the fire side and looked. "My God that egg is perfectly symmetrical" he shouted. We both marveled at the egg for a few moments and discussed some of the details. The yolk was dead center and the outer edge of the egg was perfectly round. There wasn't even that brownish edge that sometimes deprives an egg any chances of perfection. Deuce saw himself as quite a chef as well. Indeed in his own right he was, however in my mind this moment would be the single lowest moment in his cooking experience. I believe that to this day neither he or myself have sorted this out. It is still a very touchy subject. I left that pan on the fire while I stepped away to get my eating utensils. Just as I began my return I was thinking of how incredible my egg was and just how was I going to eat it. Then I noticed Deuce had the fry pan in his hand and he was flicking it recklessly trying to move the egg in the pan but it was not slipping. With each step I took towards the fire I could feel the anxiety building inside me. I remained silent, knowing that any suggestion would simply encourage him to complete his meaningless task even faster. Only steps from the fire my worst vision became a reality. The egg came loose from the pan and flew into the sand next to the fire. In complete dismay I shouted 'you fucking idiot'. I felt no remorse. I assumed that he had some understanding of basic physics and a small degree of dexterity. I was a fool. My perfect egg lay in the sand face down. I was sure at this point that the fall broke the yolk. I repeated it to myself only this time with a severely disappointed tone 'you total fucking idiot'. Finally Deuce had something to say 'take it easy, it's just an egg' he spits out. 'Just an egg, just the world's first hand-cooked-over-a-fuckin'-campfire, fucking precision bastard egg', I screamed. Oddly not one of our other camping friend have stirred. 'Look,' said Deuce, 'the yolk is still intact'. 'Don't touch it,' I took the egg and washed it in the lake. I realized I had been so aggressive with Deuce that there was no way he was going to say sorry for his clumsy maneuver. I was sitting by the lake picking grains of sand from my egg when I heard some laughing from the tents. The rest of the crowd started to rise for the day. They had all heard the tragedy unfold and they marveled over my egg. We discussed the egg story in great detail trying to establish who was the biggest moron. Me for becoming so attached to an egg or Deuce for not recognizing my attachment to the egg. I still say that if he cooked the egg and I dropped it in the sand it would be another story! What the hell are the chances of that because a) I understand basic physics and b) I maintain a level of dexterity and not to mention c) some common fucking sense! Bottom line... I re-heated the egg and besides a few grains of sand it was good and Deuce, well... I still love him.