How to Boil an Egg

"A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked."
-Bernard Meltzer

Late on Sunday night Spouse and I were out in the cold for a grueling, toe-numbing two hours in which our car was very nearly towed away from our very own parking space because we could neither open the doors or dig out the frozen snow quickly enough for the snow plough to trundle through and save us all, notwithstanding the fact that all tenants had been in their pyjamas minutes previously and had not been aware that they needed rescuing.
Except, that is, from the erratic driving of the man in the plough: we were all ducking and diving into the deep piles of snow to avoid him while he was reversing and racing forward at fifty miles an hour inside an apartment complex and I know that at one point I heard somebody cry out: "he just took down a tree!"
Out of that night emerged an unrepentant sickness which left me out cold for half a week. I am happily mending but, needing inspiration for writing, beseeched Mater to quip me some wise words that would motivate my recovery and make me laugh, perhaps.
"Do you know how to make a boiled egg?"
"I do," I replied, a trifle impatiently.
There was a heavy pause.
"Go on," I urged.
"No, that's it," she said, rather flatly. "It used to make sick people laugh in the old days. About the stupidity of asking how to make a simple boiled egg."
I could not believe this attempt.
I retorted that in all likelihood they had been laughing, not at the egg non-joke but as the result of a dizzying, raging fever.
There it is, then. I can always count on Mater to provide nourishing thoughts to chew upon.