In 1987 Eric Jonas was a Vanderbuilt University anthropology student interested in primitive games. One evening he and a few college buddies were at a pub drinking beer when they discovered it was possible to keep an egg spinning on a board by tilting it.

Ingri and I and our traveling companions (fellow hot spring adventurers Harold and Jay) discovered Jonas at a barter fair in western Montana 20 years later and were really impressed with the eggs, the boards he quickly taught us to spin them on and his purposeful manner. Jonas wasn’t trying to sell us a game because he was intent on meeting fiscal goals upon realizing marketplace expectations; he was showing us a way for people to dissolve barriers between one another by simply teaching them how to cooperatively keep egg-shaped stones spinning.

Jonas explained that it takes physical cooperation and verbal communication to keep tilting the board in a coordinated manner for the egg to keep spinning. "Once that simple and amusing feat has been accomplished, the channels for cooperative dialogue on other levels are wide open," Jonas said.

As chance would have it, the hotspring adventurers caught up with Jonas again on New Year’s Day, 2008. Jonas had just returned from a fair in Missoula, Montana, and was relaxing with us in a hot spring. We discussed the world situation, health, wellbeing and, of course, the Egg Game came up. He said that he loves bringing people together with science because it breaks down cultural, theological, ethnic, political and philosophical barriers so people can respect their differences by becoming acquainted with their commonalities.

The game works like this: Two or more people hold the round board about waist high and share its weight. One person starts the game by spinning the really beautiful stone egg, small side down. The players then gently and cooperatively tilt the board in order to continually provide the egg with a downward path upon which to travel.

You would never expect that an egg will keep spinning indefinitely so long as the players keep tilting and rotating the board. The record of four hours was set by a group of special ed students in Laquintas, California. Jonas also stated that five players had a record 10 eggs spinning at once.

Go to the website at www.egggame.com, for a short explanatory video. A worldwide message board is also available through the website and player questions and feedback is encouraged.

The Egg Game is ideal for homeschoolers, private schools and extracurricular clubs. I can also tell you from experience that adults also get a major kick out of keeping these egg-shaped, fossiliferous metaphors for life spinning.

If the Egg Game peaks your interest, call Jonas at the number below.

Have fun with this and enjoy the challenge of cooperatively keeping our eggs spinning in the year