I’d like to hear ‘em. I wasn’t sure if people would have many, but gigi’s post in the inappropriate laughter thread gave me hope.
Mine:
There were some golden years in our family when we were all of the proper age and enthusiasm to have epic Easter egg hunts. We would mark off boundary lines, split up in teams, and compete like mad. One rule, at least part of the egg had to be visible. Some memorable hiding places included an egg bobbing within a crab trap at the edge of river, and one perched boldly on a boiling fire ant nest.
However, the best one ever was a lovely beige-pink egg which my uncle hid under one end of a sleepy male beagle. The nicest part was that the dog, when approached, would roll slightly and lift up his leg in a submissive posture, looking for all the world as though he was proud to display the three nearly identical objects concealed there.
Yep, everyone found that egg, but no one claimed it…
Besides that one, mine are more sentimental/nice memories. If it was nice out, my parents would hide various treats in the yard, but separate sets and maps for my brother and me. On a rainy Easter, they’d hide treats throughout the house – no maps then but they may have labelled the items so we would each have equivalent sets.
There was a pharmacy uptown that also made fancy chocolate eggs for sale. My parents would get my brother milk chocolate and me white chocolate every year and every year I wouldn’t have the nerve to say I hated white chocolate. Ours were maybe softball-sized, hollow, but my mom’s was the size of her head. She wasn’t a huge candy fan so it took her a long time to work through hers. An old friend of hers was over who was very granola and peaceful, and during her visit we realized mom’s egg was covered in tiny ants. My reaction was to kill kill kill and hers was to gently escort them out the front door.
Text message receive by choir director right before the choir entered the sanctuary for the Maunday Thursday service:
Just sat through 5 light cycles at (major intersection) will be late and unspiritual
Another member of the choir thought we should sing Folsom Prison Blues–the choir was all in black, except for a few people who lacked enough solid black.
My former stepbrother was the kid of guy who followed the Grateful Dead, took six years to finish a liberal arts degree at some tiny college that didn’t give grades and turned up to formal events in a tie-dyed Steve Miller Band t-shirt. I was about 18, having just finished my first semester at college.
He arrives, half an hour late, for the Seder. He is wearing his tie-dye shirt, his jeans with no fabric left either in the knees or in the crotch. He is, one can tell, sans underwear. He promptly asks me if I’ve ever been offered acid and if I know anyone who sells. I do not. He gives me his number for when I do, because he needs good hookups and family is best.
Between appetizers and dinner, my family having long ago streamlined the actual reading from the Haggadah from the Seder, he disappears. And we wait for him. When he is not forthcoming, my grandmother decides that the gefilte fish is going to go off if we wait any longer, and we will eat. There is no sign of my stepbrother.
During the soup, he reappears. He sits in front of his bowl and pushes the matzoh ball around with his spoon. He stops and stares at it. Gapes. Pushes the matzoh ball around a bit more. He does this well into the main course. He stares a bit more, until he proclaims himself to be ‘so weirded out’ that he has to go sit in the car until everything is over. We take our time.
I have never found out what it was he thought he saw in the matzoh ball soup.
My sophomore year of college I wasn’t able to go home for Passover because I was cast in a play. It was “Helene” by Euripedes and I played
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wait for it
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a slave in the land of Egypt.
