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Show Remember: You can't eat a bicycle grassroots Copyright 1986 Becky Grass Johnson By BECKI GRASS JOHNSON I remember the year my daughter asked if the Easter Bunny was going to bring her a bicycle. I picked my teeth up off the floor and rolled my tongue back into my mouth. "What's wrong with chocolate bunnies, marshmallow chicks and jelly beans?" I . wanted to know. "What's wrong with a basket of candy and a good tummy ache? What's wrong with the pink and yellow plastic grass that' I'm vacuuming out of the carpet in July?" "Just remember," I reminded her, "you can't eat a bicycle." "Yeah, and you can't pedal an Easter egg around the block," she added glumly. It all started because her friend had received a bicycle from the ' Easter bunny. (Isn't - there a' law1 against that?) I explained that the.' Easter bunny has a hard enough time painting eggs all year' and ?; assembling baskets. Let's not expect ex-pect him to deliver 10-speeds ! ; Times have changed and so have some of the deliveries made by the Easter bunny. I've known kids who hard-boiled eggs into cups filled with different kinds of dye. We'd watch in amazement as the white shells quickly turned beautiful pastel shades of springtime. At the end of our project we'd admire our bowl of Easter eggs and read the news print on each other's arms. After we had gone to bed, the Easter bunny would hide our baskets around the house and we'd find jelly beans in the toes of our shoes. Some of the eggs we'd dyed the night before were in the bottoms of our baskets, mixed in with the good stuff. Mom usually insisted we eat at least one of the boiled eggs that morning to guarantee that we wouldn't O.D. on candy before Sunday School. Then we'd put the rest in the back of the refrigerator until they started to smell and we'd have to .throw them out. Occasionally Mom would' try to get us to eat those boiled eggs by using them in some of our meals. We were too clever for that old trick! (Just try hiding gross little bits of lavender and green egg whites in tuna casserole ! ) That was about as exciting as it got. But now there are Easter sales, stuffed animals, rabbit balloons and Easter egg hunts. An Easter egg hunt is an even! where children stampede each other for a handful of candy. (And parents who have spent half of their lives teaching their children not to take candy from strangers or eat bugs out of the window sill will madly cheer as their kids eat the M&M's they find under a rocker fight with a dog over a nest of malted eggs behind a bush!) And what the kids and dogs fail to find, ends up going through the lawn-mower lawn-mower a month later. Nothing is more disgusting than a bunch o! marshmallow peeps stuck in the blades of your mower! It is enough to make Peter Cottontail throw up. A child's request for a bike for Easter could give little Bunny Foo Foo a nervous breakdown. I happen to know that the one and only (rue Easter bunny is not into wheels. ' If any child at my house has the notion that on Easter morning they are going to discover a shiny BMX, I'll have to break the bad news, The Easter bunny packed his bags last night and skipped town with the tooth fairy! by BECKI GRASS JOHNSON receive cassette tapes, skateboards and hula hoops for Easter. We obviously have connections with a different rabbit because all that is - left at our house is candy and a : toothbrush. - When I was a kid, I was thrilled just with the preparation for his coming. It was vitally important to dye a few eggs the night before. Mom would make us kids spread newspaper all over the kitchen to soak up the spills, then we'd dip |