Everyone has their own tradition

This is a gem I read off of Powells Books newsletter this morning and it made me smile. Like the people at the Bull's Head bookstore here on campus, the Powells staff are clever folks and their newsletters are always entertaining. I'd want them to live in my neighborhood.

"INTERMISSION WITH BROCKMAN, BLOGMASTER:
Every year we were wakened by my father's voice, speaking in a soft but firm whisper: "Let's go, sleepy-heads, it's Easter Sunday."

We always rose, heavy-lidded but eager, and quickly dressed in the clothes he'd laid out for us on the ends of our beds. We gathered in the backyard, forming a semicircle around my father, who held sway like a ringmaster — or a drill sergeant who gave hugs. "The Easter Bunny was here," he'd inform us in a solemn tone. "And here's the proof." He'd hold up a colored egg that seemed suspiciously similar to the ones we'd dyed only a few nights earlier. (If anyone were foolish enough to express this seeming coincidence, however, my father suggested the speaker hadn't gotten enough sleep, and sent him back to bed to miss out on the Easter fun.)

"So we know the bunny's around," my father would continue, "and he must be stopped. You know what rabbits do, right? Unless we want to drown in these damn colored eggs, we've got to turn him into fricassee. First one to get the Easter Bunny between the eyes wins the prize."

And so began the annual Brockman family Easter Bunny Hunt. Next came the drawing of the straws, the biggest getting first pick of the weapons Dad laid out on the picnic table. Of course we each wanted the BB gun. I always wound up choosing last and usually ended up with the rusty hatchet we used for chopping firewood — which made dispatching the bunny a horrendous, truly messy affair. Luckily I never found the varmint myself. My brothers seemed to have more skill in tracking the colored eggs to the culprit who had laid them.
Although I never won the basket of candy and G.I. Joe toys, I always managed to sneak a few jelly beans when the victorious sibling wasn't looking. Besides, rabbit fricassee and a week of colorful hardboiled eggs for lunch is truly its own reward."