Topic: Easter

Author: Chris Dunn

I’ve been told I’m very competitive. I’ve been told this by people who’ve known me less than 10 minutes. I’ve been told this by people who’ve never met me face to face. I guess it’s true. A fire blazes inside me when the flag drops and the race is on. My heart races and I scramble for purchase, hoping, running, striving. There is no reward for second place, even when there is. Consolation prizes are for losers who need a poultice to ease their suffering. I blame this drive, this undeniable push to be first, soundly at the feet of Easter – particularly the Easter Egg Hunt.

Think about it! For forty catholic days you’ve slogged through lent, eating fish on Fridays and pretending to give up something you love, all for the promise that your piety and virtue will be rewarded by a rain of chocolate and sugar come Easter Sunday. But, no! Not yet. Not in the Dunn house. You would come down in the morning with happy, thundering feet rivaled only by those of Christmas, and you could see your basket huddled with the others off to one side of the living room, but you couldn’t touch it. You weren’t even allowed near it. Not yet. First, the hunt!

A few days earlier, we gathered around the dining table with all manner of paints, dyes and markers, each assigned our allotment of hard-boiled eggs to decorate. This too was a competition, but since there was no reward other than praise, I didn’t sweat my lack of artistic talent. My siblings eggs were always brighter, more varied and colorful, sometimes even bound together by a theme. “Look each one is modeled a different super-hero. This one is the Hulk!” I’d nod as I put blue spots on a red dyed egg and called it a day. None of this mattered. This was all prologue. Who cared what they looked like? Better would be to find a way to affix some sort of tracking devices to each one.

Come Easter Sunday, these eggs would be scattered around the house. The Easter Bunny (later just called, Dad) had come in the night and taken the eggs from the fridge and hidden them. Why? No one was ever able to adequately explain to me, but we had to find them – and find ALL of them – before anybody got any candy.

I would sit and listen as the rules of the hunt were ritualistically recited, splitting my time between straining to see what I could of my basket’s contents and trying to spot the low hanging eggs. The rules were always the same.

1.     The eggs are only on the first floor

2.     No egg is completely obscured from view at some angle

3.     There are no eggs in the kitchen or the bathroom

4.     No running

5.     No fighting

By the time the rules concluded we were frothing at the mouth, straining at the start. I think my mother actually enjoyed winding us up. And then, go! Bridgid always won. She was older, faster, bigger and 3 years more knowledgeable about my father’s hiding habits. It sucked always coming in second.

The worst was when the count would come up short, and we stand like hapless capos before the Don. “I don’t know boss, those are all the eggs that were out there. Can we maybe have some chocolate now?” Eventually we’d find them all, sometimes days later. Eggs couldn’t hide forever.

Then there were the public Easter egg hunts! Those were horrible. No manner of sibling civility. No parents looming to maintain decorum. Once the flag was dropped, they were a mad dash, and this time not for a pathetic stand-in for chocolate, this was for the real deal! Plastic eggs filled with jelly beans, Reece’s Peanut Butter Eggs (the old-fashioned big ones), cash money! No amount of sugar was enough in such events. Someone else always had more. There was always that one egg you just missed out on because another kid was just hair faster, or a tad bit stronger. I can’t recall even one of these events that didn’t end in tears. It wasn’t long before we opted to avoid the open melee and celebrate the holiday solely indoors.

But what do you expect, dangle a fix in front of room full of junkies, and you’re going to see motivated hunters. Fifty years later, I’m still chasing that dragon. Though now the game is who can get to the grocery store Easter Monday the earliest when all those prizes I once raced so hard to find go on sale for 50% off!