One year, my daughter, Celese, invited us to come to her house for Easter weekend. She also invited my father-in-law and mother-in-law, John and Corky.
Whenever we are there, we always have a pizza party and movie night. I buy the pizza and rent whatever movie our grandchildren want. Celese and Jimmy get to leave their children in our care and have a night out together.
John and Corky also planned events. They wanted to have a big Easter egg hunt. They bought 96 plastic eggs, and lots of candy to fill them. John and I would have the privilege of hiding the eggs all around Celese’s and Jimmy’s yard. Then my younger children and the grandchildren would get to hunt for them.
“You think you can find some good places to hide them?” John asked me.
“Not only can I find some great places to hide the eggs,” I joked, “but with my memory the way it is, I could hide my own Easter eggs and never be able to find them all.”
He laughed. “I’m sure you won’t even need to worry about hunting. If there is candy in them, the children will find them.”
For the movie, the grandchildren chose Veggie Tales. We cooked the pizza, made some lemonade, and sat down to veg out – literally. By the time it was over, my grandson was asleep in my arms, and my granddaughter was asleep against me. As I tucked them into bed, my granddaughter asked, “We didn’t miss the Easter egg hunt, did we?”
“No,” I answered as I kissed her good night. “We will do that tomorrow.”
We were still asleep the next morning when the grandchildren came in and pounced on us. “Is it time to hunt the Easter eggs yet, Grandpa?” my granddaughter asked.
I told them that their mother said they had to have a good breakfast first. I knew I wasn’t going to get any more sleep, so I got up and started cooking scrambled eggs and toast. Once we were done eating, it was all we could do to keep them inside while John and I hid the eggs.
We worked hard to find all of the best spots, and it took about 20 minutes to hide all of the eggs. We had just finished, and told the children they could hunt, when Corky stepped out of the motor home holding a big bag of candy.
“John, have you seen the plastic eggs that I bought to fill with candy? I can’t find them.”
John glanced at me and then turned to her. “You didn’t fill them?”
“No,” she replied. “I was just getting ready to.”
My grandson came over to me to show me a plastic egg he found, and I opened it, and sure enough, it was empty. We collected the ones the children had found, and shooed all of them back inside so that John and I could try to find the eggs we had hidden. When we finished, we totaled them, and including the ones the children had found, we only had 82. No matter how much we hunted, we couldn’t find the other 14.
John grinned at me. “I guess you’re right. We could hide our own Easter eggs and never ever find them.”
Corky filled the ones we found, and John and I hid them again. The children hunted for them, and we had lots of fun. John and I kept a bag of candy with us, and when the children found one of the empty rogue eggs, we would take it and magically fill it for them. But then they began to realize that if they emptied the full ones and brought them back to us, we wouldn’t know any better and would magically fill those, too. Pretty soon our bags of candy were empty and the children were all hyper.
We hadn’t planned to give them all of the candy; it just worked out that way. My little granddaughter came and climbed on my lap so I could wash off the chocolate.
“Grandpa,” she said, “I’m glad you’re forgetful.”
I smiled and hugged her. I guess every cloud has a silver lining.
(Daris Howard, award-winning, syndicated columnist, playwright, and author, can be contacted at da***@da*********.com; or visit his website )
