That kid terrified me.
April 16, 2022 6:36 AM Subscribe
Amazing if true, indeed. But this has apocryphal vibes all over it for me.
posted by SoberHighland at 7:43 AM on April 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by SoberHighland at 7:43 AM on April 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
Unlike almost everything I’ve ever seen on Tweeter, this is a) amusing, b) seasonally-appropriate, c) suited to the tiny-episodic-blast Tweeter format and d) not pushing some agenda (or it is too subtle for my big dog-paw brain to handle). Bravo. If it never happened, it should have. If it’s made up, the final post was inspired.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 8:03 AM on April 16, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 8:03 AM on April 16, 2022 [6 favorites]
This is like the opposite of a big Easter egg hunt I attended as a kid. It took place in a big field which has been intended to be full of tall grass… except someone hadn’t gotten the memo and had mowed it the day before. It was more of a five-minute-long Easter-egg-grabbing bloodbath.
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:35 AM on April 16, 2022 [19 favorites]
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:35 AM on April 16, 2022 [19 favorites]
I've followed this person on Twitter for quite a while, and he seems like a good egg (ha!). I don't think this is made up for clout or anything.
The "in a Tool t-shirt" line is perfecto.
posted by misskaz at 8:44 AM on April 16, 2022 [9 favorites]
The "in a Tool t-shirt" line is perfecto.
posted by misskaz at 8:44 AM on April 16, 2022 [9 favorites]
Honestly this sounds better than most of the Easter egg "hunts" I've seen that just have plastic eggs every few feet along grass. Because kids couldn't possibly find them, apparently. So boring.
posted by blueberry monster at 9:39 AM on April 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by blueberry monster at 9:39 AM on April 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
I can imagine this. Once, for my daughter's 8th birthday, my dad, my roomie and I planned a treasure hunt at the cemetery. We had read about a young woman who was buried alive there, and was then found by grave robbers and killed, that was the theme of the party. We imagined the woman and the robbers could never rest, for obvious reasons, so my friend dressed up as the woman-ghost and my dad as a robber-ghost. They both really got into their parts. I guided the kids, with a map, and fended away tourists who thought we were being sacrilegious. (Our cemetery has a tradition for unusual activities).
The thing about my daughter's birthday is that it always rains, not just a little, but monsoon-like torrential rains that are also cold in the middle of summer. Unless it is +30 C, which has happened twice in 28 years. This one was the normal rainy day.
To cut it short: when the parents arrived to pick up the kids at five PM, they were soaked, wrapped in all the sheets and towels we could find, and still crying from the intense fear they had experienced. Luckily it is a tradition at the German school here for the parents to have lots of sect at the end of a birthday party. And the kids did find the treasure, which was an insane amount of sweets. (And they had hot chocolate, of course).
These were the old days, our only regret was that afterwards, we found the actual grave of that young woman, and thought it would have been better if the kids had seen it during their treasure hunt. For pedagogical reasons.
The worst thing is that this was not the only birthday treasure hunt that ended in tears and soaked kids. I think I need to talk with her about this.
posted by mumimor at 9:42 AM on April 16, 2022 [17 favorites]
The thing about my daughter's birthday is that it always rains, not just a little, but monsoon-like torrential rains that are also cold in the middle of summer. Unless it is +30 C, which has happened twice in 28 years. This one was the normal rainy day.
To cut it short: when the parents arrived to pick up the kids at five PM, they were soaked, wrapped in all the sheets and towels we could find, and still crying from the intense fear they had experienced. Luckily it is a tradition at the German school here for the parents to have lots of sect at the end of a birthday party. And the kids did find the treasure, which was an insane amount of sweets. (And they had hot chocolate, of course).
These were the old days, our only regret was that afterwards, we found the actual grave of that young woman, and thought it would have been better if the kids had seen it during their treasure hunt. For pedagogical reasons.
The worst thing is that this was not the only birthday treasure hunt that ended in tears and soaked kids. I think I need to talk with her about this.
posted by mumimor at 9:42 AM on April 16, 2022 [17 favorites]
Luckily it is a tradition at the German school here for the parents to have lots of sect at the end of a birthday party.
I not familiar with the word "sect" in this context so I'm going to assume it's a typo for "sex".
posted by paper chromatographologist at 10:17 AM on April 16, 2022 [20 favorites]
I not familiar with the word "sect" in this context so I'm going to assume it's a typo for "sex".
posted by paper chromatographologist at 10:17 AM on April 16, 2022 [20 favorites]
LOL -- no, bubbly wine, should be spelled sekt
posted by mumimor at 10:48 AM on April 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by mumimor at 10:48 AM on April 16, 2022 [4 favorites]
My general skepticism of "so, wild story" threads is considerably lessened here by the fact that the punchline is not an increasingly shocking series of twists or some sort of suspiciously apropos zinger but rather "Most kids just rolled with the 5-star difficulty theme. Parents were confused, but at least their kids were out of the house," which seems anticlimactic and thus fully plausible.
posted by eponym at 11:15 AM on April 16, 2022 [11 favorites]
posted by eponym at 11:15 AM on April 16, 2022 [11 favorites]
Metafilter: No one died, and a good time was had by some.
Seriously though, that sounds like a great egg hunt. I would love to hide eggs in the nature trail along the creek near my house, but I would be afraid of not finding them again and thus leaving random trash everywhere.
posted by the primroses were over at 11:27 AM on April 16, 2022
Seriously though, that sounds like a great egg hunt. I would love to hide eggs in the nature trail along the creek near my house, but I would be afraid of not finding them again and thus leaving random trash everywhere.
posted by the primroses were over at 11:27 AM on April 16, 2022
Just use real hardboiled eggs. Wildlife will happily take care of any that are not recovered.
posted by tavella at 12:25 PM on April 16, 2022 [11 favorites]
posted by tavella at 12:25 PM on April 16, 2022 [11 favorites]
So... lemme tell you a story about real hardboiled eggs in Easter egg hunts...
Plastic Easter eggs became popular in the 1970s, and I'm a GenX'er, born in 1974. By the time I was actually mobile enough to hunt for Easter eggs, they certainly were common enough. But my parents and grandparents hadn't grown up with them, and thought it kind of missed the whole point. WE did REAL eggs. We'd boil two dozen eggs, paint them, kids and adults alike; the grown-ups hid them; I and my cousins searched for them. That's what an Easter egg hunt was.
Did we find ALL the eggs? Yeah, sure. I mean, okay, one year we only found 23 instead of all 24, but whatever.
The year after that, we found 25.
The year after THAT, we used plastic eggs.
posted by Xiphias Gladius at 1:23 PM on April 16, 2022 [43 favorites]
Plastic Easter eggs became popular in the 1970s, and I'm a GenX'er, born in 1974. By the time I was actually mobile enough to hunt for Easter eggs, they certainly were common enough. But my parents and grandparents hadn't grown up with them, and thought it kind of missed the whole point. WE did REAL eggs. We'd boil two dozen eggs, paint them, kids and adults alike; the grown-ups hid them; I and my cousins searched for them. That's what an Easter egg hunt was.
Did we find ALL the eggs? Yeah, sure. I mean, okay, one year we only found 23 instead of all 24, but whatever.
The year after that, we found 25.
The year after THAT, we used plastic eggs.
posted by Xiphias Gladius at 1:23 PM on April 16, 2022 [43 favorites]
There was one year when I decided to do my own super-hard Easter egg hunt. I had already dyed a dozen eggs with my grandmother the day before, and Saturday night while my parents were otherwise occupied watching television I set to work hiding eggs all over the house in the most difficult locations I could image.
I was aware of the risk that some eggs might not be found, which is why I carefully placed each egg inside of a sandwich bag and used a twist-tie to close it up. I thought I was very clever, but my parents didn't see it that way. After I was caught walking through the room carrying an egg in a sandwich bag (What are you doing?) they made me collect all of the eggs from all of the devious hiding spots I had place them in.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:41 PM on April 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
I was aware of the risk that some eggs might not be found, which is why I carefully placed each egg inside of a sandwich bag and used a twist-tie to close it up. I thought I was very clever, but my parents didn't see it that way. After I was caught walking through the room carrying an egg in a sandwich bag (What are you doing?) they made me collect all of the eggs from all of the devious hiding spots I had place them in.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 1:41 PM on April 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
The year after that, we found 25.
This is why you pencil the year on the egg before dying it.
We were selling many of our eggs in my childhood and had dates penciled on them anyway, though not usually with the year.
posted by clew at 2:07 PM on April 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
This is why you pencil the year on the egg before dying it.
We were selling many of our eggs in my childhood and had dates penciled on them anyway, though not usually with the year.
posted by clew at 2:07 PM on April 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
The plastic eggs have their own found-too-late horrors. When I was a teenager, my family did Easter at the home of a family friend - 3-4 families together. All of the kids were tweens or teens and the adults did the egg hiding. All but one, who enforced our strict isolation from all windows during the hiding. Once we were released from an interior room, we were required to be mannerly while leaving the house. And younger kids had to go in front to get the tiniest head start, because once outside it was few-holds-barred, full contact, top speed mayhem. With snickering adults loitering around to enjoy the spectacle of their collective children goating up and over New England dry stone walls, pawing through forest muck, checking the gutters and downspouts and tailpipes and car engines… There was real triumph for every egg found - some had candy, others foldable money. But because it was so competitive, you would only open and investigate the eggs when the hunt was done (by the count) or if you had to take a time out Bc you got your wind knocked out or fell down-with-blood. So you’d be pawing around in your egg bag cracking the eggs open and freeing the loot, and then you would feel and smell the Residues of Easters Past, which inevitably spread liquidified swampy horror over all the other contents of the bag. Do not want.
posted by janell at 2:54 PM on April 16, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by janell at 2:54 PM on April 16, 2022 [7 favorites]
My friend Jim loves egg hunts, but lives in a town where there's a bylaw against them, and any un-claimed eggs could net you a sizable littering fine. For many years, Jim has combined his geotech nerdery, his curmudgeonly anti-authority nature and his colossal love for leftover candy by carefully GPS logging the location of every egg, then spending the afternoon after the hunt scavenging the unrecovered ones. He never goes home empty handed.
posted by scruss at 3:49 PM on April 16, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by scruss at 3:49 PM on April 16, 2022 [7 favorites]
When I was a young teen, a local mall held an Easter Egg hunt; the plastic eggs contained coupons for things at assorted mall stores. I hung out there at the appropriate time, and noted that there were plenty of eggs in plain sight all over the lawn. There was a two-tiered approach to its start; kids up to age 7 or so were supposed to get a five-minute head start.
The staff explained that, then gave the first Go signal... and everyone took off at once.
This led to dozens of small children bawling their eyes out on a pleasant April morning.
I got one... only because I saw one near the starting line lying against a nearby tree, so I sat down with it behind my back and waited. I did honor at least a minute or two of the five-minute wait, but once it was clear that I was one of about 10% who was doing that, I reached behind me and grabbed my unholy bounty.
It contained a coupon for a free rabbit's foot from the leather store upstairs. Sorry, Easter Bunny.
posted by delfin at 4:04 PM on April 16, 2022 [9 favorites]
The staff explained that, then gave the first Go signal... and everyone took off at once.
This led to dozens of small children bawling their eyes out on a pleasant April morning.
I got one... only because I saw one near the starting line lying against a nearby tree, so I sat down with it behind my back and waited. I did honor at least a minute or two of the five-minute wait, but once it was clear that I was one of about 10% who was doing that, I reached behind me and grabbed my unholy bounty.
It contained a coupon for a free rabbit's foot from the leather store upstairs. Sorry, Easter Bunny.
posted by delfin at 4:04 PM on April 16, 2022 [9 favorites]
See also TIME FOR SOME STORIES and search for treasure hunt.
posted by bendy at 6:17 PM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by bendy at 6:17 PM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
Huh. That's where I grew up, and I recognize the park name (and description) and channel name. Looking at the date indicators, this guy is almost a decade younger than me, so I'd have been well gone by the time this happened and so can't address the story's veracity.
As far as unfound eggs, when I was in grad school, we had a habit of doing elaborate April Fool's pranks, which one year basically overlapped with Easter, so we hid (real, not plastic) eggs throughout our department overnight. A few went in the department head's office and were not found for...quite some time.
posted by Four Ds at 6:33 PM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
As far as unfound eggs, when I was in grad school, we had a habit of doing elaborate April Fool's pranks, which one year basically overlapped with Easter, so we hid (real, not plastic) eggs throughout our department overnight. A few went in the department head's office and were not found for...quite some time.
posted by Four Ds at 6:33 PM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
Related to the French "sec"?
Maybe a far back etymology but probably not given “dry” is “trocken”. Sekt is German fizz.
posted by rh at 9:57 PM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
Maybe a far back etymology but probably not given “dry” is “trocken”. Sekt is German fizz.
posted by rh at 9:57 PM on April 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
It's actually a little more complicated than that: "Seck(t)" first appears in 17th-century German to denote certain wines from Spain and the Canary Islands, and thus is a parallel to the old English term "sack", meaning fortified wine - the etymology of which seems not to have been definitely settled, but evidence points to it deriving from a step in Spanish fortified wine production, the "saca" or sample/selection which is drawn from the battery of barrels for bottling/selling. So its original meaning was just a "select" wine, likely of foreign origin. German etymologists place the shift of the word's meaning from "fortified" to "bubbly" in the 19th century, with some anecdote about a Berlin actor as the vector, popularising his personal fizz habit - there definitely was a shift, and Sekt now solidly means sparkling wine (of non-French origin), but there was likely some other wine-business logic behind it. The French word "sec" as used in relation to wines purports to only ever have meant "non-sweet" (thus "demi-sec" = half-dry = somewhat-sweet, and "moeulleux"/"doux" = sweet), but given the importance of using dried raisins to "naturally" fortify a wine (less water = more sugar => more alcohol) - as is still explicit in the German "Trockenbeerenauslese", for example - I suspect there's more to that etymology than the French are willing to admit...
(Yes: etymologies are my personally favourite treasure hunts - happy Easter y'all.)
posted by progosk at 2:24 AM on April 17, 2022 [9 favorites]
(Yes: etymologies are my personally favourite treasure hunts - happy Easter y'all.)
posted by progosk at 2:24 AM on April 17, 2022 [9 favorites]
This is why I love Metafilter. You can go from terrifying egg hunts to randy parents to 17th century etymology in the space of a few Page Downs. Truly, something for everyone.
posted by basalganglia at 9:19 AM on April 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by basalganglia at 9:19 AM on April 17, 2022 [6 favorites]
When we were in high school and into college my parents would still hide eggs for us, but in some seriously difficult places around the house. Not impossible or anything, but four of us aged about 14-20 going for 30 minutes inside the house is pretty good. The most memorable year was when my brother (one of the quiet middle kids that was apparently diabolical behind that serene mask) just... pocketed one of them. He didn't 'fess up that it had been found so we all went looking for #36 for an extra hour. My parents were doubting their sanity by the end. Lots of fun, John, you a-hole. We still mention it every year though, so well done on that level.
posted by Cris E at 9:38 PM on April 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Cris E at 9:38 PM on April 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
One year, at a church we used to attend, somebody got the bright idea to put Bible verses in the preschoolers' Easter eggs instead of candy because too much sugar blah blah. Used to attend.
posted by technodelic at 11:39 PM on April 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by technodelic at 11:39 PM on April 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
"Most kids just rolled with the 5-star difficulty theme. Parents were confused, but at least their kids were out of the house."
This feels like a win-win in that kids do not like being patronized and parents don't necessarily want to go home with a basket full of potential mess (plastic or hard boiled eggs).
posted by martinX's bellbottoms at 12:34 PM on April 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
This feels like a win-win in that kids do not like being patronized and parents don't necessarily want to go home with a basket full of potential mess (plastic or hard boiled eggs).
posted by martinX's bellbottoms at 12:34 PM on April 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
For some time before Easter each year, whenever we had eggs for breakfast, we'd use a nut pick to make a small hole in each side of the egg (at the "caps") and blow the contents out, leaving an intact eggshell. Those are what we'd dye and hang out as decorations/hide/whatever. We'd dye a few actual hard-boiled eggs but those went in the baskets themselves. This had many advantages, including not leaving us with far more hard-boiled eggs than the household was going to eat. More crucially - eggshells left out in the grass just become fertilizer over time, rather than stink bombs (whole eggs) or trash (plastic eggs). We could just toss gathered eggshells on the compost heap when their purpose was served. When my niece was old enough to have a trail of eggs left to her hidden basket (yes, we hide the baskets) she discovered the joy of stomping them, guaranteeing their future as fertilizer.
posted by Karmakaze at 12:33 PM on April 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Karmakaze at 12:33 PM on April 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
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