I've always been the cook in my house. I don't even allow my wife to microwave popcorn for fear of a house fire (I kid - she's not that bad). Back in the early 90's I bought a set of nice Calphalon commercial pans. The "good" hard-anodized ones. Cost a few hundred.

When my son was born in '96, my pharmacist wife went part time to care for him while he was little. When he started eating big people food, she fixed him a fried egg everyday. He liked them cooked hard - not runny. As I readied myself for work, I would sometimes hear the "pop" sound from the edge of a teaspoon striking the bottom of the pan when she put butter in it to fry his egg.

One day, to my horror, I noticed more dents than I could count in the bottom of the pan she used everyday. Through the months, she had peppered the bottom of one of my pans with SPOON DENTS! I got all over her. MY PAN! YOU RUINED MY PAN! Oh well... at least she only ruined the one pan. I got over it.

So it's 2016 and my now 20 year old son is still living with us while he goes to college and he'll be leaving the nest in two or three years.

That pan? The one with the bottom speckled from the all the spoon-edge dents? I wouldn't trade it for the world... each little dent representing a breakfast for our now-grown son when he was still a little diaper-wearing toddler.

Good memories. *sniff*