I want to tell a story about a story.
Once upon a time on Reddit, a confused girlfriend posted on the relationship advice subreddit about a very peculiar problem she was having with her boyfriend- he kept fighting the cook at their local Waffle House over incorrectly made eggs. Boyfriend would order runny eggs, cook would serve scrambled. Or over hard. Or an omelet. And the boyfriend and the cook would end up fighting. This happened multiple times, and the boyfriend seemed unable to let it go.
(Quick side note for my non-Southern friends, this behavior is not super atypical at a Waffle House, we've all seen weirder stuff go down while we're just trying to eat our hashbrowns)
Girlfriend is worried about her boyfriend, both because of the uncharacteristic violence and his seeming obsession with this one cook and his insulting eggs. They want to get married, but is this behavior concerning for their future together?
This post from 2020 went slightly viral and a lot of us weighed in on her original post. It didn't matter of it was fake or not, we were all looking for something to entertain us during those early pandemic times. Eventually, the discourse faded and I mostly forgot about the guy and his egg nemesis.
Until Uncanny Magazine published a short story in 2022 by Iori Kusano called "can i offer you a nice egg in this trying time" The title is a quote by Danny DeVito's character in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia that had also reached viral meme status around the same time.
Kusano's story was based on the man vs. egg cook that I already loved, but with a masterful speculative fiction twist that turned the original idea into a deeper meditation on loss, grief, and how to move on when it feels like all is lost. I won't spoil it for you- it's really good and you should read it.
I've recommended this story to several people over the last few years, but never really sat with myself to figure why I love it so much. Eventually, I stopped recommending it to people because no one else seemed to Get It.
Enter Wil Wheaton. Wheaton, of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame, is now all grown up and does excellent work as an audio book narrator. I first heard him narrating one of John Scalzi's books (maybe Fuzzy Nation?) and have actively searched out books on Audible that he reads.
Wil Wheaton's fellow Star Trek cast member LeVar Burton has been in the business of reading to people for decades. Reading Rainbow was a staple of my childhood, and the podcast "LeVar Burton Reads" was also great. When Burton's podcast ended, Wheaton started his own podcast with Burton's blessing. "Storytime with Wil Wheaton" just released it's first episode earlier this year, and it's fantastic! Wheaton focuses on speculative fiction, and specifically folks whose work has never been adapted for audio before. All episodes are worth your time, I promise.
Every one of the six episodes released so far has been fantastic, and (you might see where this is going) he just released his narration of Kusano's story. It's amazing, and I'm so happy to see more people discovering it through Wheaton's work.
In closing- this is why I love the internet. No, really. Somehow, in the midst of all the rage and despair, humanity has found a way to connect with one another and tell our stories. And when those stories resonate with us, we share them with others, and they spread- reminding us that we have always shared stories to keep the darkness at bay.
I'll put better links to all the references in this post once I'm back on a real computer, and thanks for indulging me. ❤️
Reddit:
Uncanny Magazine:
Matt tells the waiter he’ll have his eggs over easy. They come back scrambled, a neat glistening pile framed by perfect triangles of toast,
Storytime with Wil Wheaton:
It is Wednesday, my dudes, and that means we have a brand new podcast for you. This week, it’s can i offer you a nice egg in this trying tim
