The Elusive Egg

I should preface this post by saying that I do not understand the millennial generation; they of the “everyone gets a trophy” and “pass or fail” grading scale. In my upbringing there were winners and losers and the kids who won got to be cocky jerks, poor winners, and flaunt their glistening trophies in everyone’s face. In a way I think it served as motivation.

In that light, not everyone was guaranteed an Easter egg either. The Hunt in pursuit of the elusive Easter egg sure has changed since the version that was popular during my childhood. If you were lucky…or should I say physical enough to find an egg, you kept it, if not…tough. Didn't find any eggs? Too bad, go home and cry in your milk.

My experience was that The Hunt of my youth was a much more aggressive, grab-what-you-can, full-body-contact affair. The adults who planned The Hunt were merciful enough to divide the kids by age groups: toddlers up to age five, six to eight year olds, nine to twelve year olds. Twelve was the cut-off, once you became a teenager adults assumed you were too old for such childish pursuits and should be off hunting and killing your own dinner.

The Hunt was held in the big field near the big tire in Freeport Community Park. (NOTE: There were no soccer fields then….we were Americans and played American-originated sports.) I don’t recall the area being roped off; I think the expanse of the grassy area lead to more of a free-for- all, contact sport that was fueled by the all-out blood-lust for a colored egg filled with jelly beans and the maniacal pursuit of the elusive gold-colored money egg.

Kids on Tang-induced and Pop-Tart- fueled sugar highs lined up in one long, jittery, jumpy, and jockeying for position, horizontal line. The whistle blew and The Hunt was on.

There were some poor kids who never made it off the starting line; they had “Chuck E. Taylor” tread marks on their backs. Some kids hunted in ravenous packs and were to be avoided. Others ran after the leaders hoping that where there was one egg there must surely be more. Bad move. Never happens that way. Besides, by the time the followers got there the area was cleaned out and all that was left were the spoils of the hunt evidenced in empty candy wrappers.

The Hunt was individualistic and pugilistic.

I heard of the fabled money egg, yet, I never knew one kid who found it. As for me, I once came upon a brightly colored, appeared to be yellow-tinted, glistening in the morning sunshine egg that was hidden in an arch in the monkey bar set. Eyes wide, I raced for the egg. So did another kid whose name I did not know, yet, her kick to my shins left quite an impression. She claimed that egg. I think her family moved into a really big house later that year.

I stopped attending The Hunt.

Instead, I enjoyed the family-lead egg hunts around the house where the challenge was in finding the eggs not fighting over them. In later years, the Snyder Easter Egg Hunts involved maps and eggs with clues that lead to even bigger treasure. It was creative, it was challenging, it was fun.

Happy….and I do emphasize the word happy….hunting.

sj;