If At First You Don’t Succeed ... Fry, Fry Again

I was thirteen.

I’d won my first championship fight, which meant my confidence was in excellent shape and my judgment had wandered off unsupervised.

That’s a dangerous age for a boy.

Old enough to have a theory.

Young enough to test it with newly bought groceries.

Baseball had my name moving around Fremont too. Me, Jimmy Forboda, Bruce Wescott. We could play. We could hit. We could compete. We could make adults pay attention when the game started.

Local news carried our names.

I was proudest of The Argus.

I had steel.

I had grit.

I had stupidity available in bulk.

Then I heard the news.

Kids in Brooklyn were frying eggs on the street, showing off the latest heatwave’s power.

That’s all I needed.

Brooklyn already lived large in my world. Yankees. Hot dogs. Writers. Tough guys. Old streets with stories in the cracks. Men who talked hard. Kids who knew things. A place with an attitude I loved.

Now they had sidewalks hot enough to cook breakfast?

That felt personal.

Fremont had sidewalks.

Fremont had sun.

Fremont had me.

Science was about to happen.

I called it research.

Necessary research.

East Bay boy work.

A public service, really, with a favorable reading of the facts.

The boys were around, because boys have a way of appearing when a bad idea begins to take shape. Jesse had an opinion. Others had advice of little use, which qualified them for leadership.

I had the eggs.

That made me Chief.

Any one of them could’ve gone home, grabbed his mom’s eggs, and done exactly what we were doing on my section of sidewalk, but we rarely confused issues with facts.

We picked our location.

Concrete.

Direct sun.

Zero shade.

Maximum scientific possibility.

The goal was simple.

Ready, set, fry.

The first egg hit the pavement and spread out thick and shiny.

We watched with laser-focused intensity.

Nothing.

I waited because great discoveries require patience.

Three entire minutes later, still nothing.

Three minutes.

The white stayed clear and stubborn. The yolk held together, bright yellow and useless, refusing to become what we demanded.

A lesser man would’ve stopped there.

I was thirteen, which meant I was a man in training, according to me.

Newly decorated with a boxing medal and operating under the supreme confidence of a boy who believed will and persistence were enough to bend reality.

So I cracked another egg.

Same result.

Damn.

Then another.

Then another.

After four eggs, a person with sense would’ve called the experiment.

I continued.

That’s the thing about boyhood science. Failure doesn’t end the study. Failure makes the study louder.

We changed tactics.

Moved the eggs two feet and a few inches to the left.

In my mind, fresh space meant new opportunity.

That’s boyhood logic at its finest.

We spread one thinner.

Waited longer.

Checked from different angles.

Mikey said maybe the street would work better.

That sounded reasonable because none of us knew anything, and bad ideas love a committee.

We tried.

Same result.

The East Bay sun was doing its best. Fremont gave us East Bay heat. Brooklyn carried menace in my mind. Brooklyn heat could make a sidewalk surrender. Fremont heat made you complain, drink from the hose, and keep playing.

For God’s sake, kids in Brooklyn played with water gushing from fire hydrants.

Fire hydrants.

The eggs knew.

The eggs had more sense than I did.

They refused.

By the time the experiment ended, we had proof of something.

The wrong proof.

We proved that eggs on Fremont pavement don’t fry just because a thirteen-year-old boy with a championship medal and a baseball reputation believes they should.

Damn.

That was disappointing.

Also sticky.

Hard to explain.

I probably would’ve gotten away with it for a little while too, except Mama came home and decided breakfast for dinner sounded good.

Great.

That changed the entire case.

Breakfast for dinner was one of the great joys of childhood. Eggs. Toast. Bacon or sausage. Beef Sizzlean when heaven smiled on me. My life changed for the better any time Mama decided morning food belonged at night.

That night had other plans.

I watched Mama walk to the kitchen.

She opened the refrigerator.

She moved things around.

The eggs were simply gone.

I kept quiet.

I thought I’d have time to sell her on my brilliant plan.

Time was gone.

The search continued.

Gone beyond negotiation.

Mama stood there with the refrigerator door open.

The quiet came first.

It landed hard.

Moms have different kinds of quiet. Some quiet is tired. Some quiet is thinking. Some quiet gathers facts.

Calling me by nicknames meant good. Safe. Trouble stayed miles away.

Call me Bryan? Consequence had entered the neighborhood.

Mama calling me Bryan-David meant my ass was grass and she was the lawn mower.

Full name.

Case opened.

I walked in and saw the carton situation immediately.

Empty space.

Zero defense exhibit.

Zero alternate suspects.

Just me and the memory of a carton of eggs lying on a warm, underachieving Fremont sidewalk.

Mama looked at me.

I looked at Mama.

I could’ve tried to talk my way out.

I had words.

I had confidence.

I had flair.

I could sell it.

I had a long history of prevarication when the moment required creative survival.

Even I knew the courtroom was too small.

So I told her.

About the news.

About Brooklyn.

About the heat.

About the eggs.

About science.

Mama listened.

She had that look Moms get when laughter, discipline, prayer, and grocery math all arrive at the same time.

I stood there waiting for judgment.

The worst part was the failed experiment.

I had zero cooked edges to present. Zero white bubbles. Zero evidence that said, Mama, this was innovation.

Only missing eggs and a boy who’d tried to bring Brooklyn weather to Fremont concrete.

Mama finally closed the refrigerator.

Breakfast for dinner was on hold.

My experiment took damage.

The boys learned nothing, which meant we remained available for future mistakes.

And somewhere in Brooklyn, I imagined kids laughing on sidewalks hot enough to make breakfast while I stood in Fremont with no eggs, no proof, no plan, and no breakfast for dinner.

That day I learned something important.

East Bay hot is warm.

Brooklyn hot is newsworthy.

And when it comes to street eggs, Fremont had a standard:

Keep it in the pan, kid!

The eggs had more sense than I did.

My thinking was scrambled.

Those eggs stayed raw.

And that, right there, is hard East Bay truth.