APAD: Don't try to teach your Grandma to suck eggs

Meaning:

   Don't offer advice to someone who has more experience than oneself.

 

Background:

   These days this proverbial saying has little impact as few people have any

   direct experience of sucking eggs - grandmothers included. It is quite an old

   phrase and is included in John Stevens' translation of Quevedo's Comical

   Works, 1707:

     "You would have me teach my Grandame to suck Eggs."

 

   There are few grannies left who really do suck eggs.

 

- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]

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Many Chinese grannies are still capable, I am sure. Sucking eggs was nothing

magic and required only attention and basic motor skills, both plenty back in

the days of material shortage.

 

I head to the weather-beaten wicker basket half-covered with a faded straw hat

on the window ledge and peek in with bated breath. Often at least one egg lies

at the bottom of the nest, a bed of wheat stalks. Sometimes the place is taken:

a hen has snugged down there and an egg's on its way. She does not budge but

shoots me an annoyed look as if saying "I'll let you know."

 

I hold an egg upright, not too tight, with the fat end on top, aim the tip of a

chopstick, and a few jabs are all it takes to break through the shell. Next,

it's easy just to unpend the oval globe and let gravity do its work helped by

some mouth muscles through the opening which can always be enlarged when needed.

The white tastes slightly salty and the yolk exquisite.

 

Muscle memory lasts a lifetime and old habits die hard. Chinese grandmas not

distracted by Pokemon, Fruit Ninja, or Angry Birds should do fine sucking eggs.