15,000 Eggs

I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get Elijah to understand Easter on Saturday. Here is a typical exchange:

“Hey Eli. ‘Member when we talked about Easter five minutes ago? ‘Member? ‘Member God? And his son? The guy who Easter is all about? Who is God’s son? What’s his name?”

“The Easter Bunny!”

The sullen, tattooed barista at “Washington Perk” informed me that, “There’s gonna be, like, a million billion kids hunting for Easter eggs at Washington Park. It’s gonna be horrible.”

That sounded like a lovely way to spend a Saturday.

The New Denver Church, whose motto must have been, “We’re not going to get all churchy on you,” set up a massive egg hunt in a field just between the playgrounds. There was a huge roped off area, with delightfully pink police tape. Inside was 15,000, count ‘em, 15,000 Easter Eggs. There were literally hundreds and hundreds of kids milling around outside the tape, unaware they outnumbered the people keeping them away from candy 50 to 1.

I searched in vain for some kind of religious metaphor at play. Maybe the police tape was our sin and the…aw forget it. Let’s get some candy.

I found myself feeling that unfamiliar projection of competition growing in my bowels. I strangely needed Elijah to grab the most eggs in the history of the world. I decided to allow that feeling to manifest itself when he was in Little League, so I choose to accompany Luca on the hunt.

The announcer blared his 100th non-religious announcement over the loud speaker and we were ready to rock (Did, “We have a lost child over by the jungle gym” mean we were going to burn in hell?). The hundreds of kids suddenly grew very quiet.

Ready, set go and there was roughly 24 seconds of massive pandemonium. I lost track of Eli and Diana in the sea of arms, legs and plastic.

Luca toddled around the mayhem, occasionally pointing to an egg and saying, “Egg!” before a kid would swoop in screaming.

After the dust settled, I found Di and Eli. He had acquired three eggs. He was very proud of himself and I was very proud of him. But I was mostly proud he didn’t get trampled.

Suddenly, a 5 year old little girl came up to us. She asked very politely if Luca wanted one of her eggs because he didn’t have any. Now why on Earth did this bring tears to my eyes? What is wrong with me? I sniffed and said thank you to the little girl. And then cursed myself for being such a sissy.

She handed Luca an egg and he said, “Egg.”

And then the sugar rush began. More on that later.