I was 17 and decided with some friends to hold an Easter egg hunt geared to the handful of other teens we hung out with. It was weirdly wholesome of us considering we mostly drank Mad Dog and loitered at Waffle House.
— ?? David Griner ?? (@griner) April 15, 2022
Our commitment level to the egg making was…minimal. We dyed 2 dozen eggs, figuring that’d be plenty for the handful of our friends who showed up the Saturday before Easter.
But we took the hiding VERY seriously. We arrived at Monte Sano park in Huntsville, Alabama, around 8 am and got started.
Monte Sano is a mountaintop park filled with boulders and cliffs and crags, and we scaled around hiding eggs in the hardest-to-reach spots like we were paranoia-deranged lizard people trying to hide our young from eagles.
We climb down, filthy and cracking up at the idea of our friends trying to find these impossibly tucked-away hardboiled death trinkets.
We walk back up to the entry area of the park to find our friends, but it’s hard to spot them.
Because it’s so crowded.
There are 100 families. Little kids with baskets everywhere. Someone asks if we know where the egg hunt is. Someone else asks. They keep asking. “Who’s running this Easter egg hunt?”
It’s a good question.
Something dawns on me, so I ask:
“Where did you all hear about an Easter egg hunt here?”
“The news.”
Me: “ABC? Channel 31?”
“Yes!”
Us, collectively: “Fuck.”
(Rewind 24 hours)
The day before, we tell our friends about our dumb egg hunt idea. One older friend says he can’t make it because he’ll be working late. At the TV station. WAAY 31.
That night, the weather man asks if he has Easter plans. “Just going to an egg hunt at Monte Sano in the morning.”
The weather man, understandably, makes a logical assumption. He announces live on TV that the Saturday weather will be great.
For the egg hunt. At Monte Sano…
Read the rest of the story here.
(I for one think the last line should be a rotating header here!)
Redshift
That’s awesome!
eclare
Very funny story. Reminds me a little of the Barkley marathons.
NotMax
No problem homing in on unfound eggs provided one is willing to wait a week until Orthodox Easter rolls around to go hunting them.
“Just follow your nose.”
– Toucan Sam
:)
NotMax
Fortunately for all parties involved there’s no such thing as a Pesach gefilte fish hunt.
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lurker
one year as a kid I found an egg that no one could identify. It was dyed, not just some random egg in our yard (parents hid eggs outside that year). Parents counted up the eggs. We had one too many. Best guess was that the extra egg I found was from the previous year, and had somehow survived a year without getting too disturbing in the process. No one really knew, and there was no good explanation. Not something I think about much, but it puzzles me to this day…
NotMax
@lurker
NotMax
(slaps wrist sharply) Fixy fix.
@lurker
Presumably prior to first viewing Alien?
:)
Anne Laurie
Hiding the afikomen is a *lot* safer — the adults are unlikely to forget where one piece of matzoh has been hidden, and if none of the kids find it, the worst that happens is a stale cracker.
satby
This line slayed me:
BretH
When I was little our dog once found a too-well-hidden hard boiled egg months after easter. Took a few days before the house smelled normal again. Moral: always count the eggs.
NotMax
@satby
Basket of daboiledables?
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Ceci n est pas mon nym
@satby: My immediate reaction was “I want to know who that little girl grew up to be.”
TaMara
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: The best reply in the comments was “she grew up to be Jen Psaki”
The Fat Kate Middleton
I love this story! It reminds me of how much our grandchildren loved hunting for the eggs on our country acreage. Our youngest, who was 3 at the time, asked if we could please have an Easter egg hunt every time they came to visit us.