Great Lay

It’s a fucking good job that humans aren’t laid in eggs.

For a start, if we were, would we celebrate our birthday on the day of laying or on the day of hatching? Or both, perhaps, in order to maximize our receipt of presents? I suppose hatching makes more sense because there’s always a possibility that a laid egg won’t hatch. The mother might forget to incubate it, for example, or some grandmother who’s successfully completed a correspondence course in egg sucking and achieved a much sought-after HND in the field might put her newly acquired skills into practice, which I imagine might render the egg unhatchable. Or you could just get poached or scrambled before your time. The possibilities are endless.

And what would the equivalent of a premature birth be in such circumstances? That you’re laid before your egg shell has fully formed, and thus come out as a load of liquid? Or that you hatch before you should, and emerge with a fully formed body but with a yolk in place of a head. If the latter, and you were then placed in an incubator, would you eventually develop a proper head, or would your yolk simply go hard?

Another thing: If you said to someone “I laid an egg”, couldn’t that be misconstrued as paedophilia? What about “a great lay”? Is that where you produce a dozen eggs simultaneously?

Excuse me, I’m pissed.