From the birds and the bees, to family trees.: The Tin Man's Eggs

The Tin Man's Eggs
31 March 2013

Aaahhh, Easter! A time for family, chocolate, good food, relaxing, the first bit of rain, painting of hollowed out eggs, family vegging sessions on the couch watching movies or a good mini-series, the mystery of the Easter Bunny, flour and baby powder footprints right through the house and the garden, ponderings about why a rabbit delivers eggs and where the whole bunny thing comes in at all (the egg bit I get - it represents new life, I think), The Giant Egg hunt, feeling sickly sweet from chocolate, great excitement all around, schloefing around at least one whole day in PJ's, drinking hot chocolate (like we need any more chocolate), letters written and pictures drawn for the Easter Bunny, etc. Basically, family nirvana.

I bravely ventured a trip to the shops the day before Easter. How daft! Because braveness or not, Easter eggs don't buy themselves. And I hadn’t really gotten my act together yet. What a surprise. Not. And so I needed to stock up on some loot. The eggs were literally flying off the shelves. Shop staff were busy unpacking them from boxes and customers were loading them up into trolleys immediately. Some even delving straight into the boxes. Queuing for eggs in fact.

I always go slightly moggie over Easter myself. But then again, I go moggie over Christmas too. Every year, the kids and I have a ball painting hollowed out eggs. We spend ages before Easter stocking up on eggs, by eating omelettes, waffles, pancakes, flapjacks, etc. In fact any egg dish requiring eggs to not be whole. You simply make little holes on either end of the egg, and blow the inside out with all your might. I never seem to make the holes big enough and always seem to suffer from a bout of severe dizziness including visions of floating stars from blowing so hard. The painting is such fun. I've got loads of paint and more than enough brushes. Every year we try a few techniques. We do stripes and patterns. Scribbles with special pens after the painting's been done. Dotting stickers all over, painting over the whole egg, pulling the stickers off and leaving perfect patterns. And over the years, my egg stash has grown. It is lovely to see how the children have grown in proficiency and artistic skill as they've gotten older. Still their early smudged and splotchy works are some of my best. We decorate the whole house with baskets of painted eggies, little chickies, and bunny goodies. Our decorating loot ever increasing. Predictably at age fifteen, Luke has unsubscribed to it all and simply wants us to stop fussing and hand over the eggs. Still he does actually understand that he had his turn in believing in the Easter Bunny and doing it all. And now it is the turn of Cole. And though Amber doesn't believe in the Easter Bunny anymore, she fully subscribes to all that goes along with it. She simply laps it all up and helps to keep the mystery alive for Cole.

Yet, apart from all of the above, one other story simply always springs to mind when I think of Easter. A very, very good friend of mine, was still in her pre-kid-years with her husband. In fact, I think her husband was then still only her boyfriend. And judging by the story, I don't think they had been together for very long. Because if they had been, he surely would have understood the need for him to spoil her on Easter with lots of chocolate bounty. Especially of the Lindt variety me-thinks. Clearly, my friend had spoiled him. Knowing her, most handsomely too. And I would imagine that her surprise was rather huge, when the chocolatey goodness was not reciprocated. From the sounds of things, they had a bit of words about his insensitive lack of spoiling. And then, in order to gain some distance from him and to soothe her hurt feelings, she decided to go for a long leisurely bath. Girls do that.

Now said husband/boyfriend was not a stupid guy. He realised he was in the proverbial dog box. And he needed to get out of there fast. But how does one do this on Easter Sunday, once you've already messed up? He couldn't just dash off to the shops and get her a treat. By this stage, all the best goodies were gone in any rate.

But being a man, he relied on his baser instincts and thought of an ingenuous plan. One that would have guaranteed results. But his plan would have to be so good, it would have to a) dig him out of the hole he was in, b) add a bit of humour, as humour goes a long way, c) slightly humiliate himself, as that would show true remorse, and d) hopefully aid him in getting lucky on Easter Sunday. He was going for broke.

Which explains perfectly, why he waltzed into the bathroom whilst she was lying in the bath (wallowing in self-pity), to proudly display to her "his eggs" wrapped in tinfoil.

I do believe that it was an unmitigated success and that it met all of the abovementioned requirements.

Though to aid in the humiliation part, said friend shared the story with all of us. Much to our mirth and his horror.

And so, till today, we often refer to him as Tin Man. We even went to so far as to print him a Tin Man t-shirt for his birthday one year.

Which serves to illustrate one point with perfect clarity. Not only does hell have no fury like a woman scorned. It also has no fury like a woman who has been deprived of chocolate.

True story. You have been warned.