Eggcellent answer!

Easter seems like a good time for an egg story, so I'll tell one that's related to the beautiful egg pictured here. My stepson, a talented artist, carved this egg from a block of plaster of Paris, then painted it, when he was 16 years old. I've always loved it and kept it prominently displayed in my home.

Sometime in the early 80s, my mother, my sister, and my two nieces came from Texas to Baton Rouge to visit me. I'm not by nature a neat person, but when you have advance notice that your mother is coming, you're obligated to clean until everything's spotless.

As we visited around the dining room table, my younger niece, who was about 5 or 6 at the time, picked up a deck of cards and began playing with them. After a while, she started absent-mindedly folding down the corners of the cards, and that's when my mom stopped her. Mother pulled the little one onto her lap and said, "Don't mess up Aunt [Velvet's] cards. Don't you see how nice her apartment is and how well she takes care of her things?"

My niece was embarrassed and a little angry at being corrected. She ducked her head, tucked her chin tightly into her chest, and looked out the corner of her eye as she responded in a barely audible voice, "Mmm-hmm. Except for that egg."