Re: THE EASTER SUNDAY LIFE!!!! HERE 'TIS
Wednesday, 15-Apr-98 02:13:28

131.170.8.12 writes:

I'm not sure if this is the one people are asking for, (or haven't seen), but this is the one in the sunday 12 april sunday life mag.

i'm not sure if it's typed up aswell, but i picked up the paper today, so i'll put it in.

hope you enjoy the article.

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EGG HEADS

Paul McDermott lets his inner child run riot at Easter time.

A long time ago I stayed with a friend from school over the Easter wweekend. His parents were ferret-faced university lecturers. Rallying against the commercialisation of Easter, they hatched a unique plan. They sent four children into the yard without having hidden a single egg. We entered the garden full of hope at 11 o'clock in the morning: it was six before the flyscreen door opened again. We were allowed back in the house, our bodies and clothes stained, our anguished faces streaked with tears. My friend's parents smiled and asked us what we had found. We held open our empty hands, they embraced us and said, "you don't always find what you're looking for." Then they added, "You'll never forget this Easter." And the strange thing is, I never have.

It was a lesson in life that made me obsessed with the true meaning of Easter: the egg hunt. Where no quarter is given and none taken. Where cheating by peeping out a vindow was mandatory. In the egg hunt there will always be winners and losers. Here was a game containing such power it was almost pagan. I would have dragged my bum along a razor wire fence if there was an egg waiting for me at the end of it. Sharing the booty was frowned upon - what you found you had to consume. YOu became hunter, gatherer, eater: an unholy union of base appetites.

In the pitch of the hunt, nothing wqas beyond the realms of reason. Even though we knew our parents would never place eggs anywhere that put us in peril, we checked every possibility. We would blindly stick our hands into stacks of ceramic pots, knowing they housed a family of redbacks. We would crawl out on the branch of the old gum knowing it was dangerously close to frayed electrical wires. We would check in the neighbour's yard, aware of his short-sightedness and love of antique guns. (He had once shot the cat with a wax bullet, mistaking it for a rabbit. If we were holding eggs in the middle of his yard, we could easily be mistaken for rabbits as well.)

When you had the prize, you could tell how much your parents loved you. In the family it was one thing: they could try to be impartial, but in the schoolyard it was another. the true test came when you described the type of egg (or eggs) you received the next day at school.

You endured an intensive study converning the nature of the chocolate: if the gift included any other kind of confectionery, the design and style of the packaging and approximate price. Standing alone on the handball courts with your pathetic paper train of caged chocolate eggs, you realised the sad truth was your parents didn't love you.

the tragedy for me is, as an adult, I have not managed to rid myself of the thirst for the hunt. this is the reason I have become unpopular at Easter gatherings. I confess I've pushed young children out of the way to get to the letter box first. I locked an astute child in a cupboard to keep him out of the running. I am the Philby, burgess and Maclean of the quest: I have pretended to be an adult, helped hide the eggs and then swapped sides and joined the kids. Last Easter I crawled along a ledge in an apartment block five storeys above the ground just to get to an egg I had placed there.

My saving grave is that I am not a hoarder. The hoarder is an evil child. Months after Easter the hoarder will still proudly display their stash. This child will walk around untouched by the Bacchanalian excesses of the chocolate frenzy. The days of pain that traditional follow Easter will not affect them.

Now let us spare a thought for the eggs we never found. The ones who never returned. they're still out there. Thirty went out and onlly 28 made it home. Tucked away under the blades of the Victor two-stroke, shoved down the side of the compost bin or in the back of an unused tool kit. They're out there somwhere, in every backyard across this nation - the eggs that never came back.

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(phew, lucky i can tough type. i just did that pretty quickly my hands a re a bit sore, but i have to go and do a few things now). i'll give my fingers some rest. Besides the air conditioning is blowing where i'm sitting in the lab, my fingers are a little frozen...

*gives a mean stare to the computer desk*

hope you enjoyed that folks :)

minerva

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