doubled eggs

i hated potluck dinners, but they were a common occurrence in my childhood. every time something special was going on at church, we would have a potluck dinner. i know some people really like them -- but not me. i don't like my food mixed together, especially foods that shouldn't touch, and i don't like to eat food when i don't know who prepared it. well, maybe i should rephrase that. i don't like to eat food that i know some people prepared! but i'm always afraid that that person or those people will bring something different some time, and i'll eat it by accident. not knowing that the person whose food i didn't want to eat was actually on my plate. probably even touching something else, too!

well, this day was another potluck. ugh! as i was walking in to church, our neighbor asked me to help her carry her stuff in. she was a clean person and a good cook, so i didn't mind eating her food. she was a nice person and i had known her forever. she was married to "prince charming," or at least who my child's mind envisioned as the real-life version of prince charming. so i went over to her car and she started handing me stuff. i used the opportunity to find out what she had brought for dinner. she had a jello salad (not eating that because it was all mixed together), green beans (i could do those), and "doubled eggs" (i didn't know what those were, so i probably wasn't going to eat them!).

as we walked into the fellowship hall, i was asking questions trying to get around to what in the world "doubled eggs" were. i was listening to her talk, and i had known her for a long time, so i was focused on some of her speech abnormalities. i'm guessing she probably needed some speech therapy when she was young and just didn't get it. she said "ff" instead of "th" at the end of words, so "with" became "wiff" and things like that. i always thought that was kind of funny for an educated person to not notice that some words were said different that everyone else said them. or maybe she just didn't hear well enough to tell the difference? or maybe she just didn't care? whatever -- i found it interesting.

well, i soon found out what "doubled eggs" were. in her vocabulary, she was referring to deviled eggs, but she called them "doubled" because they made twice as many as the number of eggs she started with. amazing thought, einstein! so if she wanted to have a dozen, she "doubled" six eggs. that was the key, too. she always just needed 6 eggs. i just kept on chatting w/ her on the way in, but i filed this information away for later when i was w/ mom and dad -- they just had to hear this definition!

my dad liked anything eggs, so he really liked deviled eggs. we had them quite a bit at home, so we used this new term quite often. to this day, my family refers to deviled eggs as "doubled eggs" just for this reason. we had "doubled eggs" on easter, and we had to explain to lucas why we called them "doubled" instead of deviled eggs. over the years, we've accumulated quite a collection of strange things that people say. we use these in our vocabulary just like they were meant in a different context b/c they have meaning to us. in fact, i once had one of my close friends say to me, "i know you just said something different to scott than i think you did, but i can't figure out what it was. sometimes i think i know exactly what you're talking about, and other times i know i don't have a clue." one of these days, i'll have to write the key to the codes we use when we talk.