And I didn’t read through the whole comment thread, either. I just scrolled to the end to see how the flame war turned out.

And all this talk of eggs has got me hungry for beef donburi now.

Egg-town is a pejorative term that refers to the days of bartering, during the Great Depression. A traveling salesman would have to barter his candy or tobacco or shoelaces for different commodities. A poor exchange would be for eggs, a relatively common item that is also highly perishable. Nobody wants to trade for eggs from a traveling salesman because they have their own, so the salesman who accepted an egg in exchange was forced to accept a bad deal. Salesmen would use the term like “If I were you I would stay away from Bogart. That’s an egg-town.” Of course, the lack of trust among salesman was also high, and it was likely that one salesman would lie to another about the quality of a town’s customers to keep them for himself. Invariably, the second salesman ventures into Bogart only to find it is truly an egg-town. He is either persuaded to not visit a town that has good customers or is tricked into visiting a town that can only offer eggs. The term “egg-town” represents a deal with undesirable outcomes in either case.

Also, count my dad in as one of the people who didn’t hear the ending and totally didn’t get it. He kept insisting the kid was Sawyer’s.

And I’m not willing to venture into much discussion elsewhere, but did people really think Aaron has Down’s Syndrome? Or that he looked like he did? (Because I’ll admit that flashed through my head briefly, but then I dismissed it.)