Rachel Abrams

Hi, my name is Toby Crockett, and I'm from Paso Robles in California.

My mom's expression was, don't teach your grandmother how to suck eggs.

I was always like, okay, well, why would anybody want to suck eggs?

One, why would anybody need to be taught how to suck eggs?

Two, and what did my grandmother have to do with it?

Because she did not seem like the egg sucking type.

Of course, later I learned more about it, you know, and understood that this was supposed to mean, hey, stupid whippersnapper, don't tell me how to do what I already know how to do like a million times better than you do.

And while it might have been somewhat confusing as a child,

Now that I'm in my 60s, oh, it's so righteous.

How many times do I want to say this?

It's sort of like the all-purpose version of mansplaining.

Like, don't mansplain me and don't teach me how to suck eggs either.

My name is Hillary Smith.

I live in Brooklyn, New York.

I was in middle school and I was having some kind of meltdown about a school project that just felt too big and too overwhelming and that I was never going to get it done.

And in the middle of my freakout, my mom said to me,

Hillary, how do you eat an elephant?

And I was kind of like, what?

What is she asking me?

And I thought about it and I was like, in a giant gulp?