With Easter just around the corner I feel obliged to record a family story.  The story dates back to my youngest daughter, Kathryn’s, Easter egg hunt.  She was about three and since birth had grown up in “The House of High Cholesterol”.  Trust me when I tell you it will become clear later in this story why that is significant.

We had all headed down to the community park for the annual neighborhood egg hunt.  While the older children were given a much more complex set of rules and far more difficult hiding spots, the three year old group had been invited to the bowl shaped lower area of the park.  There, not hidden at all, were hundreds of brightly colored eggs of the plastic kind, chock full of chocolate and sugar delights, and the actual, chickens had laid them, eggs.  Even from the top of the rise it was quite easy to see them all strewn about and waiting.

On the sound of the horn, which by the way scared half of the seekers into leg clutching terror, the brave ones were off on a run down the slope.  Kathryn eagerly chased down to the pit and then started wandering about among the eggs.  It did not take long for us to notice that she was not picking up any of them.  Shouts of encouragement and direction seemed to have no effect.  Eventually she came back up to us, tears running down her cheeks.  Through her gasps for air between sobs, we deciphered that she was telling us that there were no eggs down there.  At this point her sister steps in and points out the eggs lying about right there in the open and asks her just what is the problem.  I believe Bailey envisioned herself as the true parent here and was going to straighten her sister out.

Kathryn looks up at her and says those aren’t eggs.  At this point I stepped in, eager to be the caring and wise father, and asked her just what she thought an egg was?  She looks up at me with that tear streaked face and said, “you know, the little yellow boxes!”  If you haven’t made the connection, lets revisit “The House of High Cholesterol.”  It seems, we had never actually consumed a real egg for fear of immediate and excruciating death.  Her mother and I may have read a few too many medical reports on the evil plot chickens were hatching on us, yes pun intended.  The only eggs Kathryn had ever seen were in the little yellow boxes, namely, Egg Beaters.

The good news is, we were able to explain as rapidly as possible, the misconception about eggs and, thanks to those terror frozen three year old’s still clinging to their mother’s legs, there were plenty left for Kathryn to save her first Easter Egg Hunt drama.  Now several years later, at a Mallard’s game, Kathryn was one of the lucky names drawn to participate in the Infield Cash Dash.  Apparently we had done a bang up job in this department, for she had no issues finding cash.  I maybe, however could have explained that the bigger numbers on the bills out weighed the popularity of the face on it.  But I’ll save that for another story.

Just remember “They don’t know what they don’t know!”