Many, many years ago, before I had a child of my own and before my brothers had children of their own we existed in that magical phase of life that is being an adult child. Most of the things that kids love like birthday parties and trick-or-treating had long faded out of fashion for us. Gone were the days of toys at Christmas or kid’s meals for dinner. Gone was most everything from our childhood, but one tradition survived, evolved, and adapted itself to our new adult existence. Perhaps one of the most magical traditions of them all…The Easter Egg Hunt.
There are a few theories of how these hunts managed to persist through to our adulthood. One is that at every Easter lunch, and really any family gathering, my mother always insisted we play a game. She would not do this for the fun of the game but for the fun of winning. She only picked games she was good at and nobody else was and croquet was the usual choice for Easter. Croquet is quite possibly the dullest of all yard games, which would explain why my mom would always win. Ten minutes into a game of croquet with this woman and everyone else had forfeited, excusing themselves to chug box wine and eat deviled eggs, leaving only her to win.
Personally, I believe the hunts continued to exist because we are a slightly greedy people and it wouldn’t matter if we were hunting charcoal briquets or pinecones. As long as one of us had more of something than the other, nothing else mattered. Either way, the events somehow evolved from a bunch of kids running around wildly looking for plastic eggs full of candy to adults running around to find eggs full of money. The physicality also changed and the hunts become something of a full-contact sport. Tackling, hitting, cursing, stealing, it was all fair game.
The grand prize of an Easter egg hunt is usually a “golden egg”. For kids, maybe it has a toy in it. In our case, the golden egg contained cash and when you’re an adult child, no amount of cash is a trivial amount. Every penny counts.
Unfortunately, I was outmatched going into these hunts. I am a large fellow but I am the smallest of our brood. I am also the most sensitive to pain. For me, these hunts become more about the experience than the money. I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t want to get killed. For my brothers though, this was a blood sport. There was no such thing as failure. If you weren’t bleeding at the end of a Walter Easter Egg Hunt, you didn’t hunt correctly.
One year while I walking through the grocery store I spotted a package of golden plastic eggs. A devious light went off in my head. If I wasn’t going to be able to win the game, perhaps I could have fun with it? So I bought the eggs with every intention of setting them out during the hunt. This way, when it was all over, my prize could be reveling in the disappointment of my brothers opening something they thought contained a vast sum of money only to find nothing.
The year that I brought these eggs I also brought my dog, Tattnall, who was then a rambunctious Boxer puppy. As I lay out the eggs my dog ran over to one of them and laid an egg of his own. I think you can see where this is going, and if you can’t, you’re a better person than most.
When the egg hunt started that year I hung back and walked around pretending to pick up eggs while my brothers rushed around armed with their massive fists and plastic grocery bags. Then a surprise participant joined in, my father, and I knew I was in for a real treat. Digging through bushes and pine straw and tree limbs they discovered all of the eggs…even the golden ones. As they rushed from egg to egg their bags swung around and all the plastic eggs started to break apart. I recall it was very hot that Easter and all the coins and cash and contents of the golden eggs mixed quite well together.
When they realized what had happened, what horrible thing I had done, the words that came out of their mouths…It would take a year of Easter Sunday services to null and void that. I do not think I have laughed as hard ever since.
After that, the rest of the activities that day gave a new meaning to “money laundering”. I am not sure if I was ever forgiven for what I did. I do know that it was the last year we ever had a full-contact Easter egg hunt. It was the last year we were ever asked to play croquet and that may quite possibly be the best golden egg of all.