Bad Egg

Easter was a lot different when I was a kid.

 

You know, back in the ‘Olden Days.’ Back before there were cell phones, cars with seatbelts and microwave popcorn.

 

For one thing, Easter was a big day. Second only to Christmas.

 

Everyone went to church. And I mean everyone. If you weren’t seen at a local church on Easter morning, you can guarantee that your neighbors would look at you the next morning like you murdered a small child.

 

We would have so many people show up at our church, we had to to bring in folding chairs from the fellowship hall and set them up in the aisles.

 

Made collecting the morning offering a little tricky, but we managed somehow.

 

Those were the days when they passed the offering plate down the pew so

everyone knew how much money you put in.

 

And you better have put in something or you were likely to denied participation in the big dinner-on-the-grounds following the morning service.

 

These days, despite the big praise bands, light shows, giant LED screens, and pastors who wear blue jeans on Sunday morning (you know, so they seem ‘hip and cool’), our churches are like ghost towns. Even on Easter morning.

 

On my way to church this morning, I passed more people out mowing their grass than getting ready for church.

 

Another thing I remember from those old days was how people dressed up on Easter.

 

My mom and sister wore matching dresses that my mother had sewn herself.

 

And my brother and I would always get a new suit.

 

Bright lime green or baby blue leisure suits with wide-collared silky shirts boasting some of the most horrid patterns known to man.

 

We looked like tiny versions of John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever.

 

You had to get to church early because it would be packed. And I remember we always sang the hymn ‘Up from the Grave He Arose’. All three verses.

 

But the best part of Easter, at least for us kids, were the Easter Egg Hunts.

 

There were no plastic eggs in those days, or at least not around my house.

 

If real eggs were good enough for Jesus, they were good enough for us. That was in the Bible some where. 2nd Phillipus, I think.

 

The week before Easte, my mother would go to the A&P and get each of us kids an egg coloring kit.

 

It came in a colorful box and included little color tablets you dropped into vinegar, some cheap wire hoops for dipping the eggs with and- if you spent a dollar more- even stencils that you could use to make your eggs extra special.

 

We never got those. My mom said it was an unecessary waste of money.

 

Come on, Mom. A dollar? Jesus would do it!

 

We each got a dozen eggs- from our own chickens, not the store. My mom would boil them in a big pot and after they cooled, the decorating fun would begin.

 

We would spread out old newspapers on the table and go at it.

 

I can still smell that colored vinegar we dipped those eggs in.

 

I would draw a pattern on my eggs with crayons to which the color would not stick. I got pretty good at drawing the Easter Bunny. Or at least I thought so.

 

My brother said it look Ed the Talking Horse.

 

My sister was creative, dipping her eggs in multiple colors to make stripes.

 

I tried that and mine just came out looking like I dipped them in mud.

 

After we were finished, we’d pile those colored eggs into a big basket for my parents to hide in the yard.

 

These days, parents make it easy for kids to find the eggs. They just waddle around the yard and toss the eggs right on top of grass.

 

There isn’t much of a challenge for the kids these days. They just run around the yard like rabid squirrels looking for nuts.

 

But not in my day. Adults didn’t just toss eggs out in the open. They hid them.

 

Really well.

 

My dad was a master at this. When he hid eggs, we would be lucky to find half of them.

 

There would be eggs hidden deep inside sticker bushes, in the tops of trees, buried in flower beds and even inside the glove compartment of the car, which was locked.

 

My parents would hide all those colorful eggs we had decorated while we stayed inside the house, arguing about who would find the most.

 

When they were finished, we kids would run out of the house like escaped prisoners and scour every inch of our yard for those hidden eggs.

 

Especially the prize egg- the only one that was plastic- which held a five dollar bill. An unimaginable fortune to us back then.

 

We found most of the eggs, despite my father’s attempt to hide them in places that even the FBI would not dare look.

 

Afterwards, we’d all sit on the back porch and eat those eggs, tossing the shells to our chickens who seemed to be completely oblivious to the fact those little crunchy morsels had come out of their own butts.

 

I can imagine the horror on the faces of kids these days if you told them they were going to eat their Easter eggs.

 

That is unlikely in this world of vegan, gluten-free, low-carb keto meals of kale and tofu.

 

I doubt most little kids have ever even tasted a boiled egg. But we did and we loved them.

 

Maybe it was because we put in so much effort to find those dang eggs that they tasted so good. We’d peel them, dip them in salt and pop them in our mouths like they were made of ice cream.

 

It was an especially big treat when we peeled one of those eggs and the dye has leaked through the shell, turning the egg blue, yellow or even the dreaded muddy brown.

 

Those eggs seemed to taste even better for some reason.

 

And what we didn’t eat that afternoon, we would take to school the next day for lunch. Every kid did.

 

Easter would be over. We’d put away our baskets and leisure suits. Forgotten until next year.

 

And we would go back to playing our normal games. Cops and robbers. One-on-one football. Kick the can.

 

But every now and then, we’d find one of those decorated eggs hiding under a bush or in a rain gutter. It would have been days or even weeks since they had been hidden by our parents.

 

But we didn’t care. It was a special treat made even better because it has eluded us for so long.

 

So, we would find a shady spot, peel those old eggs, and you guessed it- we’d eat them.

 

Imagine how horrified today’s parents would be if they saw their little darlings out in the yard snacking on a month-old egg that had never seen the interior of a refrigerator.

 

They’d slap that egg out of their kid’s hand and take them directly to the hospital to have an emergency bowel resection.

 

But our parents didn’t seem to care if we got salmonella. As long as we didn’t throw up on the shag carpet in the living room.

 

Also lime green.

 

Most of the time, the eggs were fine. A little stale or with some green spots growing on them, but they went down without killing us.

 

But there was always this one egg that wasn’t fit for consumption. A few hours after munching on it in the backyard, that egg would come right back up the way it went down.

 

Imagine if your kids got sick from salmonella these days. Moms would march on Washington and testify before Congress asking the government to ban eggs.

 

Heck, they would probably manage to get Easter outlawed altogether.

 

But who cares, right? Nobody wants to dress up and take their kids to church on Easter anymore these days. Or any Sunday.

 

They miss the point of the holiday which has nothing to

do with the Easter Bunny or egg hunts.

 

It’s a special day because of one thing. The most important one thing that ever happened.

 

It was the day Jesus returned from death to demonstrate how much he loved us.

 

Even if we puked rotten eggs and wore a lime green leisure suit.