Easter in our house, like pretty much every other holiday in our house, is a day of traditions made up on the spot. And so this year, a year in which household unemployment fell by roughly 4,000 percent, Easter found us with no real food in the house, no baskets, no time for shopping and no plan.
We colored eggs using a carton that had been in the refrigerator since the last time someone had been to the grocery store, which no one could remember. We used whatever leftover egg coloring accessories we could cobble together from the Easter 2011 box in the closet under the stairs.
We stuffed dusty plastic eggs with the closest thing to candy that we could pull together on the fly: Scraps of paper with IOUs and advice scrawled on Post-it notes. It was a huge hit with the kids, one of whom decided to go the movies with her friends instead of sticking around to see how things would turn out. Whatever. It's called improvisation, children, learn it.
Easter 2015: Advice For Teenagers and Candy IOUs.
1. Improvisation is your BFF.
2. Say "Yes." By which we mean try everything, seize opportunities, take risks. You will give your parents a heart attack but that is how nature works.
3. Wait. Strike that. Please do not do anything that could give your parents a heart attack, or even just an anxiety attack because at their age it's kind of a slippery slope.
4. Where is my change? (Not advice, technically, but still, we saw a chance to communicate and we took it. Improvisation.)
5. IOU 1,000 jelly beans. Or at least more than you will be willing to count, which is the same thing as far as you know.
6. Master pronoun agreement, but don't be a stickler about it. Never be that person at the party explaining the difference between whom and who. Whom cares?
7. IOU one dozen of those fancy hazelnut things in gold foil that you love. What are they called? Let me know and I will buy them the next time I go to the grocery store.
8. Clean your room.
9. Be nice to your mother.
Happy Easter, SK
Photo: We took our egg inspiration from the back of the box this year. Because we are underachievers.
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