The title about sums it up.

I thought it was just about eggs and candy and bunnies. And pastel colored things, like the hat on this very stylish lawn ornament I saw a few blocks from my apartment:

On Wednesday, I am leading the ESL class I volunteer with, and the students want to talk about Easter. Many of them were unsure of what the holiday is, or why they are seeing goddamn bunnies and jelly beans all over the freaking place. They didn’t really say it like that, but I am sure that is how they would say it if English were their native language.

I’m not sure how qualified I am to lead a class about Easter. For my family, Easter meant this:

On the day before we would color eggs. Each year I would get more adventurous with how I tried to decorate them. I’d mix colors and make striped eggs. I’d get out the white crayon so I could create designs on the eggs that the dye would not stick to.

On the morning of Easter, my Easter basket (which I reused each year) would be on the coffee table and filled with candy like jelly beans, gumballs, and Whoppers that looked like spotted eggs. The eggs we colored the day before would be hidden in the living room, and I’d search for them while my parents drank coffee and smoked cigarettes. (My sisters were too old for the egg hunting by the time I was old enough to remember it) And that’d be it. I’d probably eat a few of the eggs and then feast on the candy, and we might have a big dinner with ham in the menu.

I went to one outdoor Easter egg hunt. I found a lot of eggs, but started to feel guilty about how I was finding more than the other kids. At the end of the hunt, I shook the Easter Bunny’s hand. The bunny suit was awful, and I could see a scrawny white arm up the costume’s sleeve.

I talked to Bryan about what he did for Easter. He said: church things, like egg hunts. His family would also hide eggs (real eggs and plastic eggs) in their yard. They’d often find eggs months later while mowing the lawn.

Also, I remember this one time on the school bus, this girl named Leslie showed me this smashed leftover Easter egg she had in her backpack. It was green and the smell made me gag. I moved to another seat, even though we weren’t supposed to be moving around on the bus.

Eventually we just sort of stopped celebrating Easter and, during my freshman year of college, when I learned that Easter had something to do with Jesus and resurrection I (after looking up the word “resurrection” and probably making a joke about how it has “erection” in it) I didn’t do much of anything. I spent that Easter in my dorm room, alone, watching tv. At the time, my current tv obsessions were: anything on Comedy Central, even if it played three times in one day (such as Crank Yankers, Chapelle’s Show, South Park, or, if I were lucky, a Kids in the Hall marathon), Most Extreme Elimination Challenge, Elimidate and the Fifth Wheel. I probably also ordered some Domino’s Chicken Kickers using my meal plan card and only put on pants when I needed to leave the room to use the bathroom. And I most likely thanked Jesus for giving me a weekend nearly alone in the dorms so that my bowels could relax a little more and I could peacefully poop with no one in the neighboring stalls.

This year I’ll be working a day shift rather than my usual evening shift. I’m grateful for that. Hey, is Easter a time where I’m supposed to get all grateful for stuff? Or is that just Thanksgiving and Christmas?

Anyway, I’ll be writing the Easter lesson plan with the help of Wikipedia and other quick sources. In the meantime, tell me about your Easters or lack of Easters, or your favorite hard boiled egg recipes.

Or if you’d prefer not to talk about Easter, please comment with what your favorite Prince song is. Mine is a toss up between “Little Red Corvette” and “When You were Mine.”

The whole Prince thing isn’t off topic–in case you were thinking that this post just took a strange turn. Prince is clearly dressed as a farmer, perhaps an egg farmer (and Easter involves eggs), in this photo:

I find it to be a very festive shot.

But in case you don’t see it, maybe this picture will make it a little more obvious:

Now that the Easter Prince picture exists, I can mean it when I say HAPPY EASTER!