I hate eggs. Hate them.

You can scramble them, poach them, make them sunny side up, and then you can go ahead and stuff yourself because I want nothing to do with them. I have a hard time watching people eat eggs. I liked French toast until someone told me it was nothing more than a piece of bread dragged through a beaten yolk. Now I don’t touch the stuff.

Derek can’t figure this out. He loves eggs. There’s a donut shop right near our house, and every so often, I make Derek’s morning by getting him an egg and cheese sandwich on the way to school. One morning, before Christina and I woke up, Derek made his way into the kitchen, got himself a bowl and cracked five eggs. Then he wanted for us to cook them.

(That was all Christina.)

We decided to color some Easter eggs last week, and that I can handle, because all you’re doing is dipping the disgusting things in dye. Or so I thought. One of Derek’s eggs cracked, so he and Christina proceeded to peel away the shell and munch on the soft-boiled contents inside.

I had to escape to the safe, egg-free confines of the living room couch. Again, Derek was confused.

“Daddy,” he asked while gleefully chewing away, “why don’t you like eggs?”

“I don’t like the taste,” I said, fighting hard to hold down lunch.

“They taste perfect. They taste like eggs,” Derek responded.

I explained to Derek that just as he didn’t like certain things – sauce on his Buffalo wings, fruit-flavored Sponge Bob toothpaste – I didn’t like eggs.

Unlike the green and orange shell that hit the kitchen table with a tad too much force, Derek didn’t crack.

“But they taste perfect,” he said.

I guess in this instance, the egg has rolled far from the coop.