A bad egg.

Kev never thought of those three words as anything more than an idiom. Like “the black sheep.” A miscreant. Trouble.

Kev had no idea.

Kev and Jess like to spend long weekends in western and central Michigan. But they hate the traffic between there and Chicago. Six interstate highways merge together as the wind around the southern tip of Lake Michigan. Six lanes of trucks and cars towing boats and campers all vying for space and position inevitably end up in a parking lot like standstill at best, multiple lane-blocking accident at worst.

The route was riddled with various forms of pollution, noise, air quality and profanity from Kev to other drivers. “Honey,” Jess would say, turning up the volume on the Barney or Disney video entertaining the girls in the backseat, “not in front of the girls!”

Though, to be fair, pedestrian profanity rarely broke past Kev’s lips these days. He had to be taken by surprise to elicit the classic vocabulary. He had gone out of his way to produce an all new translation of the typical verbal outbursts of frustration and anger. “You flaming grunt monkey!” he might yell instead. Or “Watch it, donkey butt!” Or the girls’ current favorite, “Winkles!!” Or some combination, like, “You winkle-faced grunt monkey!!”

Jess and Kev have found taking the highways winding through small towns in northern Indiana perhaps not a faster route, but definitely a less stressful alternative. Several Amish communities thrive there, and in them they have found wonderful little restaurants and shops. Nappanee, Indiana, with fewer than seven thousand residents, has wonderful Amish shops with homemade sweets and butter and farm fresh eggs. Those Amish, they’re always up to something fresh. Jess and Kev had gotten hooked on all three.

“This butter is so creamy and sweet,” Kev told the Amish as he presented his credit card for purchase, amazed that they were allowed to accept the plastic form of currency. But honestly, he didn’t really know too much about their simplified traditions beyond their yummy food, furniture products, and friendly demeanor. “And these eggs! What a difference between these and grocery store eggs!”

“Watch out, though,” the Amish warned, “every so often you get a fertilized egg mixed in.”

“How can you tell?” Kev asked the Amish, “Do baby chicks burst forth when you crack ‘em?”

“Well, not exactly,” the Amish replied, not unlike the ominous character in the first act of a horror film. “But you’ll know.”

Kev had no idea.

A week or so later, at the peak of the July heat wave, the temperature outside topped one hundred degrees and, to Kev, some farm-fresh egg salad sounded delicious. So he placed a few of the Amish eggs in a pan of water and set it to boil.

A few minutes later, he noticed that one of the eggs looked wrong. It had broken through its brown shell in a way not unlike the Hulk tears through his purple pants. The egg white was not white, but dark gray and something even darker—and wronger—seemed to lurk within.

“A bad egg,” he thought, shrugging it off as no biggie. It happens. Kev didn’t want to spoil the rest of the batch, so he carefully removed the abhorrent thing with a large spoon.

Warning: If you ever find yourself in this situation, carefully wrap the nastiness in a paper towel, take it to the farthest reaches of your property and bury it in the ground. Do NOT put it in the garbage disposal.

Kev had no idea.

He placed it in the sink but it was too engorged to fit down the hole. Kev gave it a slight tap with said spoon to push it through. It was like setting off a bomb. The reaction was swift. The smell…oh, the smell…scampered like an evil sprite up his nose, slithered down his throat, grabbed hold of the contents of his stomach and gave a painful tug north.

Before he fell into a full on retch, Kev managed to push it the rest of the way down the disposal, blast the water and flick the switch. The sound was thick and crunchy. Was there a faint scream escaping the drain, or was it rising from within him? He made a mad dash for the powder room off the kitchen holding his breath and desperately on to his breakfast.

Jess entered the kitchen. “What is happening!?”

Kev could barely respond, afraid that a full explanation might be punctuated with vomit. “Lemons!” he gurgled. “Shove lemons down the disposal!” He had noticed a couple of lemon wedges as he’d retracted the eggs from their farm-fresh carton in the fridge.

Jess did, gagging and opening the window. They opened all the windows, the smell was horrid. Thick. Suffocating.

Remember, it was hundred degrees outside. And no breeze.

They did not have egg salad for lunch.

Kev had no idea.

He did, however, now have a greater appreciation for the term, a bad egg.