Easter Egg Hunt

About five or so years ago my family went down to Chicago to visit some family friends for Easter. The mother and father of the family we went to visit were friends of my parents and we would get together with them at least once or twice a year. As of about 2 or so years ago we stopped, however, because they split up, the dad married someone half his age, the divorce got really sloppy, one of the kids moved out on his own, and it was just a sticky situation all around. That doesn't really have anything to do with my story, but I always think about it when I think about them. Seeing a family fall apart is one of the more tragic incidents to witness.

As we were down visiting our family friends, it was agreed that we'd do an Easter egg hunt. The Easter eggs would be hard boiled eggs that we would decorate the night before Easter. The mothers got to work boiling two dozen eggs while the dads talked about dad things and the kids sat around watching tv as kids like to do.

Once the eggs were done boiling, everyone was given a couple to paint in whatever manner desired. I can't recall exactly what I drew on mine, but I'm pretty sure it was just some random color combinations because I can't draw for crap. Honestly, my coloring job looked worse than that of my little brother and the youngest kid of the family we were staying with, but I'm not that bitter about my lack of artistic abilities... really, I'm not... stupid hands...

In the morning before all of us kids got up, the parents hid the eggs for us to find. Dads, acting like dads decided to hide the eggs in crazy hard places so that we had to scour the premises for hours to find all of the eggs. Even after the many hours of searching, we only managed to find 23 eggs. Since we'd all tired of looking for eggs and wanted to eat lunch, we appealed to the dads to go find where it was they had hid this egg that not any of us could find. Turns out that they hid it so good they couldn't even find it again.

We all gave up on that last egg and figured it would show up eventually. We ate lunch, enjoyed each other's company, and when it came time my family drove back to Minnesota. Life got back to normal and the memory of the missing egg slipped away.

The next year we went back down to the same family's house to celebrate Easter once again. We colored another two dozen hard boiled eggs. The dads again hid them in the most devious places they could find. The kids searched for the hidden eggs for hours and before lunch the search was again called off. There was a difference this year, however. When we were counting how many eggs we'd found so that the dads would know how many they had yet to find, we tallied up 25 eggs...