How Not To Hunt For Easter Eggs

Easter is supposed to be a time of peace, atonement, reflection, and in Connecticut... rioting at a child Easter egg hunt. Yep! The "I want free stuff and I will behave badly if you don't give it to me now" mentality takes no break for Easter. A free Easter egg hunt in Orange, Conn., turned into a chaotic "mess" this year when parents rushed the field and ignored staff members' instructions. It was, "My child wants his free stuff first, I guess." What a lesson for the little ones to learn on a sacred day.

I remember attending these same kinds of Easter egg hunts with Jane when she was a little girl. They were simple, fun and a free event in every U.S. city an town. Children arrive at certain times for age group "hunts" for plastic eggs filled with trinkets or candy and  just plain candy that are spread about the hunt area for easy access foe all kids. That way bigger kids can't push littler ones away and grab more goodies. Even a slacker like me could find enough eggs to make me happy at those hunts. It's organized and precise fun for children. At an Easter egg there is no need to rush to the front or act selfishly to find plenty of goodies. The small ones have fun, and mom and dad get to watch a memorial child moment all free, courtesy of charities that provide the experience.

But we live in the age of entitlement, the "I want free stuff' era". Selfishness, not brotherly/sisterly love, rules today.  The simple Easter egg hunt of yesterday that was organized and co operative is now as chaotic as a free food line.  This event in Orange Connecticut, hosted by PEZ Candy USA, was forced to end early though. "Unfortunately people chose to enter the first field prior to anyone from PEZ staff starting the activity. The crowd moved to the second field, waited for only a couple of minutes and proceeded to rush the field without being directed to do so and before the posted start time," a statement from the company said. Parents pushed their kids into the hunt area to get an advantage and "egged" them on to grab whatever they could get prior to the official start. Someone should throw eggs at those parents.

The sensible, normal parents at the hunt, those who understand the value of the hunt is not to loot the field of candy first, but to share in a communal event of generosity and care for others  reported many kids had to leave without any Easter eggs. At least one said their child got pushed and got a bloody nose. (Sounds like a Christmas shoe sale event). A PEZ representative described the parents as being like "locusts." One parent commented on the company's Face book page expressing their disappointment over what happened Saturday afternoon. "This event was a joke to put it mildly," Susan Kristie Nandori DeRosa said on Face book. "We have a 3 year old. The parents first of all were letting their uncontrolled children pick up eggs prior to the start. Then when the event started all the parents rushed in and we're picking up the eggs."

PEZ said they laid out 10,000 eggs for the Easter egg hunt and distributed candy and coupons to participants as they left to try and remedy the situation. But greed and stupidity won out over sharing sensibly. Oh, wait....that's normality today.