Today we took Cranky Jr, my pride and joy, apple of his cranky mother’s eye, to his first ever easter-egg hunt. We brought along two cameras (video and digital), and I actually dug up some gingham wire-edged ribbon and tied a perfect Martha-Stewart-Would-Be-Proud bow on the side of the basket he’d be using to collect eggs.
How many eggs did Cranky Jr. get?
1/2.
That’s right, 1/2 of a plastic egg.
I had figured that greed and competitiveness, being the principal components of my own withered soul, were passed down to the fruit of my loins. I was sure that Cranky Jr. would see those little anklebiters swarming over the field for those eggs and be all over it like white on rice.
But no, when the whistle blew and 100 other kids charged forward, he meandered over to the first egg, which was about three feet in front of him, and picked it up in a leisurely fashion. I thrust out the basket and coaxed him to put in inside, while Mr. Cranky proudly filmed away. He relinquished the egg reluctantly. By this time, the other kids have swarmed on and are 50 feet away, picking the field nearly clean. I happened to notice a forgotten few eggs not too far away and I started cheering Cranky Jr. on to them. We were met at the little egg cache by another parent with a similarly disinterested kid. We exchanged sheepish glances. I finally got Cranky Jr. to reach down and actually pick up the egg I had chosen and that is when I realized that it is, in fact, just one half of an egg which another kid picked up a little too roughly and split in half.
Cranky Jr didn’t care, of course, and he put it in the basket, which I had set on the ground to better be able to point and coerce him over to the egg. That’s when I noticed that the one egg he already had in there was gone. I think the other loser finally figured out the point of this exercise and snatched it.
So what we now have commemmorated on film is my son’s triumphant take of one half an easter egg. I ran into several other moms I knew from Junior League on our way back to the car, and the question of the day was “How many eggs did you get!?” You’ve never seen anything more dismal than an easter basket with nothing but one half of a cheap plastic egg rattling around in it.
Next year, we commence training in February.
