The God of Dinosaurs

There is something truly magical about a home made fried egg sandwich.  I should know because I just ate two and got sticky yellow stuff all over my work clothes and I wasn’t even mad because you can’t feel anything but a sort of confused delight when you are ingesting a fried egg sandwich.  Fried egg sandwiches turn you into the human version of a yellow lab (because yolks are yellow, not black or chocolate).  You love everyone and a warm fuzzy feeling starts in your toes and makes you crinkle your nose.  And then you take a nap on the couch with a piece of burlap because if you touch anything warmer or fuzzier than that you will burst into a shower of confetti.  You have to be careful, all the kings horses and men can’t rebuild you from confetti.

The secret to the egg sandwich, the thing that takes it above and beyond all other sandwiches, even the BLT, is chili flakes.  I did not know this.  In fact, until I ran away to Tampa, Fl last spring I thought the fried egg sandwich was an abomination.  It was an act against god.  Consuming any kind of egg not hidden safely away in a prison of flour and chocolate chips was a sin on par with murder or not loving Transformers in my mind.

You see, when I was a wee young thing, I ate approximately 16 billion colored eggs one Easter.  I remember peeling the shell off and being delighted that I was about to consume something that was kinda blue a little bit.  At least it was blue where the egg had cracked because it had been dyed by a herd of shrieking 6-to-10-year-olds who had consumed their own weight in cheap, egg-shaped chocolate.  And then, as wee young things are wont to do after eating a lifetime worth of chocolate eggs and normal eggs, I spent the next 24 hours vomiting terrifyingly colorful egg scented vomit all over everything, everywhere.  

It was years before I could walk past the dairy section in the grocery store without reliving that sulfur-y nightmare.  Christmas parties with deviled eggs became protracted, glittery torture sessions.  Chickens became little satanic minions that left their horrible thin-shelled organic grenades strewn around my yard like little Vietcong man traps, but with less death and maiming and more irrational horror.  That is how much I hated eggs.

Until I had my first homemade fried egg sandwich during a particularly brutal hangover in Florida.

It was like being crowned by Aslan.  It was like Hagrid showed up at my door, handed me a sandwich and told me I was going to be a wizard.  This sandwich was all of my dreams cooked, seasoned with salt, pepper and red chili flakes, covered in cheese, and handed to me on a plate forged by the hands of God.  And now I can’t stop eating them.  I think I’ve eaten another 16 million eggs in the last 6 months.  My arteries are probably slippery with fat and cholesterol.  The doctor could scrape it out and form little chickens that would lay little eggs.  Little eggs that I would give to geneticists who would regress their little chicken chromosomes until they became dinosaurs and then I would be the God of dinosaurs.  And that is why fried egg sandwiches are awesome.