Michael D. Davis

You’ve tuned into the Mike show on this Easter weekend, and my mind’s percolatin’ and my blood’s ciculatin’, so let’s get at it. Sit back in your easy chair, munch on that chocolate bunny that will be half off next week, sittin’ by the Fourth of July stuff, and listen to a tale selected from the always weird, always ridiculous, up and down, continuously idiotic life of me, Easter themed.

For years, the Easter traditions in my house were the same. It wasn’t fancy, it wasn’t lavish, it wasn’t full of cousins and uncles, no, it was just good. It starts with the eggs; my Ma would prepare a couple dozen on the stove. We weren’t plastic egg people; we were boiled egg people. Ma would always prepare them for me and my sister. My sister would sometimes try helpin’, once by stirrin’ the eggs in the boilin’ water. I guess egg soup was the thought process there.

Once the eggs were done, my sister and I would decorate them. A dozen different little plastic cups would be spread across the dinner table filled with skin altering colored dye. We would start out with separate colors, but about 20 minutes in, one or two of the cups would possess either brown or gray water from all the mixing.

My sister was the real pro at this; I call myself an artist, but this poppycock had me over a barrel. I plopped an egg in a cup, then waited two minutes, then struggled for four minutes trying to get it back out again with that bent paperclip that came with the kit. She would use that horrid bent paperclip thing to only dunk a portion of the egg in the dye. When we were finished, it was no mystery who’d done what egg.

On the day of, we would always have our own hunt with the eggs we decorated. We’d take turns. My sister would hide the eggs around the yard for me to find, then we’d switch, and I’d hide the eggs for her to find.

This one year turned out particularly interesting. And I want to preface this by sayin’ I was only four years old. So, it was my turn to hide the eggs. We’d already gone one round, so most of the obvious spaces had already been utilized. I was saunterin’ along the side of the house, and I see this pipe that’s jutting out from the side. This pipe is nice, round, and just perfect for an egg. I place the egg in the pipe, just at the mouth, in the entrance. I then finish hidin’ the eggs, and my sister commences her search.

We always kept count of the eggs. You never stopped searchin’ till ya found every last one. On this particular round, my sister was down to one egg that she just couldn’t find anywhere. It took so long that my Ma gave in and had me go around pointing out all the places I’d hid the eggs.

Things were fine until we got to the pipe. My sister said she never saw an egg in the pipe. I said that’s where I put it, I don’t know where it went. Well, as there was no broken and cracked egg on the ground under the pipe, there was just one place it could’ve gone, down the pipe. And this pipe, as it turns out, was the exhaust pipe for the furnace.

At four, my feelings on this issue were hunger muddled with indifference. My dad’s weren’t as ambivalent. He was steamed. He marched me down to Scharnweber’s the next day and had me explain to them what I did. I’ve seemed to have blocked most of the memory of this incident out of my head, but it wouldn’t be the last time he’d march me somewhere.

Anyways, the Scharnweber guy comes on over and starts slicin’ up the pipes that zigzag through the basement. The man was on an easter egg hunt of his own. My dad repeatedly made me go to the basement to see what my carelessness had wrought.

After cuttin’ open, lookin’ in, then closin’ up multiple sections of pipe, the Scharnweber’s guy called it quits. He couldn’t find the egg. In fact, we never found the egg.

The Easter after that, the old man followed me all around the yard as I hid the eggs. I don’t know why I didn’t have his trust. I mean, in my head, I was, and still am, one of the best egg hiders to ever live. Think about it, I hid that egg over 20 years ago, and no one’s been able to find it. The Easter Bunny ain’t got nothin’ on me.