I'm slightly hard boiled about Easter eggs

Today is the day we will color eggs!

It's a fine holiday tradition.

Afterwards?

Really, we don't do much with the eggs except admire them as they adorn the table top by day, and fill the refrigerator by night.

We don't hide them, we don't seek them, and the majority of us don't even eat them.

When you let little kids run around hunting them, they get cracked and dropped and squished.  I'm not really a fan of that.  I even find myself trying-not-to cringe when the kids accidentally crack the shells during the dye process.

I grew up hunting boiled eggs on Easter morning, and LOVED it!  We would race frantically through the house, giggling when we would find an egg in someone's shoe or in an especially sneaky spot. We must have dyed dozens of eggs, because everybody found plenty.  We ate a lot of egg salad sandwiches at Easter time.  

Here now, I present to you, the biggest reason we don't hide REAL eggs:

There was an incident.

It was early June.

I was well into my teen years.  My mother had taken the six of us to the local elementary school to be fingerprinted. (a free child safety program sponsored by the local Police Department) We were waiting in a very slow line on a VERY hot and humid day.  There wasn't much to do.  We were probably collectively whining, and maybe annoying each other.  I'm not sure how this went down exactly--perhaps mom was rifling through her purse to find gum.  Maybe she was trying to come up with something to entertain the younger kids... who knows?  What I do know, is that suddenly the air around us was permeated with a noxious odor that had us covering our noses and buckling under the terrible reality that the smell was coming from my mother's purse.  The source of that horrific smell?  An Easter Egg cleverly hidden in mom's purse that had never been found.

It was funny.  We were EMBARRASSED!  It felt traumatic.

I NEVER want to experience that kind of Easter fun again.

Now you know the rest of the story.