ANOTHER EASTER STORY

This is not an Easter story about Jesus dying and coming back to life...blah blah blah. This is a story about living here.......Way Down In Mayberry. That my friends, can be downright weird at times. I struggle with the money aspect - or in our case, the lack of money aspect. Let's just face it. There is no way in hell we can keep up with the Jones's. Maybe it's because the "Jones's" (our next door neighbors), bought their gazillion dollar home 5 months ago (for cash I might add) and haven't even moved in yet.

Way Down In Mayberry has their share of professionals: Surgeons, Lawyers, Investment Bankers and CEO's. This small town has more retired couples in their 30's and 40's than I can count on two hands. Bubby knows what people think of our community and is actually VERY embarrassed to live where we live. When people ask where Bubby lives, if he says that we live Way Down In Mayberry, their reaction is....."Oh!" (In their mind they are thinking...."rich little bastard.") So Bubby has a canned response now. Here's how it goes:

Person: "What part of town do you live in?"
Bubby: "Ummmm.....I live out past the dump."
Person: (Long pause) "You live out by the dump?"
Bubby: (No elaboration) "Yup."

If any of Bubby's friends are with him, they laugh and make him confess. If no one is with Bubby, then people believe he lives in a single-wide, broken down trailer somewhere by the dump.

And here we are, Bubby and I with our gaggle of children in our home with a backyard full of large plastic toys and two gigantic, ill-behaved canines that bark at every bird that flies by. All we need is a blue plastic tarp and a broken down car in our front yard and we would complete the white trash look. For those of you that are acronym challenged....O.W.T.W.D.I.M (Official White Trash Way Down In Mayberry). That my friends, is a snapshot of the All family.

So where does the flipping Easter story come in you say? Let me explain........

Every year, Way Down In Mayberry has an Easter Egg Hunt for all of the children. It is an exclusive event and outsiders may not attend. Parents are to purchase a dozen of those plastic Easter egg thingies for each child and fill them with treats and trinkets. The eggs are then dropped off to volunteers before the event. On the day of the hunt, the eggs are hidden and the children each go home with twelve eggs and their treats inside.

(notice the Easter Bunny copping a feel on Tori - so "Christian-like")

That's 48 eggs for me to buy for folks. I didn't want to stuff the eggs with candy. My kids are still eating candy from Halloween. So I purchased some Sponge Bob tattoos (100 tattoos for $3.99) and put a couple in each egg. I also picked up a few finger puppets and some miniature bubbles on a ring. Those would be the "special finds". Little did I know how silly my eggs would look next to the others.

My kids each came home with at least a couple of $1 bills in their eggs. Some kids even found $5's, $10's and yes, $20 bills in their Easter eggs! How ridiculous is that? What happened to a few jelly beans or an icky marshmallow egg?

The quest for having the well manicured lawn next to the neighbors house has carried on over to an innocent Easter Egg hunt. What could I possibly prepare for next year that would beat out a $20 bill in a plastic egg? An all expense paid trip to Disney Land for two? A hundred dollar gift certificate to Toys-R-Us?

Some days I think it would be much easier to burden a cross on my back and thorns on my head than to endure this silliness.