Saturday, April 7, 2012

An Easter Tale from my Idyllic Childhood

My parents run a local magazine (the Tay Report - 49 issues for 49 dollars!) and this week my mother's column reminded me that some of my .. ahem.. creative parenting practices.. are something I come by honestly.

Source
Picture it, Aurora Ontario, 1986.  Get your tissues ready, folks.

A small, quiet child about six years of age wanders forlornly around the house, brightly colored basket gripped in her pudgy little hands. She peeks in corners and under furniture looking for the brighlty colored candy eggs she has been anticipating for weeks.

But there is nothing there...

That child was me.

Meanwhile my parents were being awoken after a night of merrymaking by my sister, age 14, hissing at them in disgust.

“You forgot to put Easter eggs out for Andrea! She's been wandering the house for an hour! What the hell is wrong with you two??&rdquot;


They promptly leapt out of bed to find me downstairs, eyes filling with tears as I told them about the Easter Bunny's oversight.

&ldquot;Mommy.. Easther Bunny forgot me...  Wath I bad?&rdquot; (I've added the lisp here, because it makes the story that much more pathetic and heartbreaking in that Cindy-Lou Who kind of way - yeah, total manipulation all the way).

“Why, Santy Claus? Why? ” - Source

Thinking quickly on their hungover feet my parents assured me that since the Easter Bunny had so many kids he had to hide eggs for that he would need two whole days and that he would surely come the next day.
Source

To their credit, my parents never missed another Easter.  Now here's the part that Tay Report readers didn't hear about.  For years afterwards, I was convinced that the Easter Bunny came on Easter Monday.  I couldn't quite place why I knew this.  I guess maybe I had repressed that particular Easter, the Easter I was forgotten, somewhere deep in my tiny little psyche.  I was told over and again that, no Easter was always on Easter Sunday.  But a little nagging part of me insisted that there was a time, once upon a time, that it fell on a Monday.

My mother's revelation has made everything so clear.  Not just my confusion regarding the Sunday/Monday issue, but also where I get my penchant of messing with my kids heads, ever so slightly, in the name of both maintaining the credibility of childhood myths but also for my own cheap amusement.

Thanks, Mom and Dad.  Happy Zombie Jesus Day.

12 comments:

  1. My sisters & I still tease my mom about the year the Easter bunny came out camping with us...that lazy bunny piled all the eggs under one lawn chair. You don't even want to know what the cadbury eggs looked like.

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  2. I wish I could say I was an exemplary parent, but the Easter Bunny has been very late arriving at my house - twice! No hangover involved.

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    1. Easter bunny is unreliable around here, but not nearly as bad as the tooth fairy.

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    2. I am pretty sure the tooth fairy only managed to find my house twice.

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  3. Our family had this Christmas character Bully Bully Neebar. There is some disagreement among the now adult cousins regarding his species--elf or reindeer. However, he was used to make us behave before the holidays. The "grown-ups" would see his ear peeking around a corner to spy on us because of course Santa was too busy to spy on every kid. My cousin didn't realize he was not a universal imaginary character (Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Santa) until she talked about it in college and everyone thought she was nuts. Oh well.

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    Replies
    1. Gotta love that, eh? My mom used to call me her "little horses patoot" which I thought was all cute and endearing until I found out what a patoot was.

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  4. a)I love celebrating zombies of any kind, b)The Golden Girls is one of my all-time favorite shows.

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    Replies
    1. Using guilt for hard-boiled eggs is just wrong... You could have gotten so much more!!!
      *cough*
      Amateur
      *cough*

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  5. My pleasure. I'm just lurking here with my fellow blogstalkers. Plus, everyone loves an annual visit from someone who isn't a proctologist.

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  6. Ah yes, Easter Monday. It's right up there with New years day after and Thanksgiving Friday.

    great story

    Hope you had a good holiday with your family...sorry ive been lacking in comments. I will correct that.

    Hi andie

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