What's that Smell?

Reading Abby Greenhill's sweet My Favorite Easter Memory reminded me of one of my childhood memories, too. So not being above stealing someone's idea, I'll relate mine.

I was about five years old, and times were hard. Being five, I didn't really know times were that hard, but I've since learned that fact from my mother. It's hard to know when times are hard when you're five, because you measure things by your favorite TV shows or whether it's raining outside.

Anyway, when I woke up Easter morning, there sat a large basket with a chocolate bunny and assorted candy eggs sitting in a mound of the artificial grass. Fortunately, my mother and I had dyed a dozen boiled eggs the day before. Mother always seem to know when we'd need colored boiled eggs. I always thought Mother had some sort of secret power because she always seemed to know ahead of time when we would be needing such things.

I was an only child, and in hindsight, I think that Mother and Daddy assumed it would take at least a dozen eggs to keep me busy for a quite a while if they hid some of them in really difficult places. Otherwise, it would be a constant stream of "hide 'em again."

The day was really nice as I remember, and by the end I hunted all the eggs my parents could stand, and really did quite well finding them. At the end of the day, my mother took the eggs and placed them in the refrigerator for use later. Well, actually, she put the 10 that were left in the refrigerator, assuming I had not been able to find the other two.

Doing what a child normally does once the excitement is over, I had placed my Easter basket in the corner and pretty much lost interest in it. A few days later, my mother wandered around the house seemingly looking for something. When my father asked her what she was doing, she said something about an odor that she couldn't locate. Thinking a mouse might have somehow crawled into a wall and died, she kept sniffing along the walls.

A few moments later, I saw Mother come walking by holding her nose with one hand and my Easter basket in her other hand, which was as far from her as her reach would allow. As she walked by me on her way to the trash outside, she looked at my father and said, "I found the missing egg. It was under the grass in the basket." Needless to say, after that Easter, we searched a lot harder for any missing eggs.

www.associatedcontent.com/article/2750425/my_favorite_easter_memory.html