Bill Riddell

Easter, Kangaroos & Broken Teeth

Easter has always been a favourite time of year for me, in spite of the occasional bad times.

Not because I directly celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, instead since I was a small boy I have enjoyed devouring copious quantities of chocolate. And a four day holiday dedicated to mass consumption of the sugary goodness is ok with me.

Raised as an atheist I was largely unaware as a child of the true significance of Easter.

I didn’t make the connection between delicious chocolate and the death of some wise dude who was nailed to a cross, then entombed in a cave only to emerge days later, resurrected. Why would you?

***

At the age of about 10 it seemed the man above was striking me down for my blasphemy.

My gorging on a derivative work of the cacao bean resulted in some sort of undesired reaction. Specifically my throat swelling and all but closing over. As terrifying as the struggle for breath was, the swelling of my ears was of greater concern. I didn’t want to look like those guys I’d seen once on Star Trek.

Allergic reaction or insulin spike , I can’t quite recall. But it was all quite traumatic.

There’s little fun waiting around in a hospital emergency waiting room struggling for air and thinking of Spock (unless perhaps you’re a Trekkie with a medical fetish perhaps).

As if a major curbing of my chocolate intake was not enough insult to injury, I was forced to watch my family enjoy the spoils contained within their shiny foil eggs and rabbits.

***

The following year my well intentioned grandmother thought she had a solution that would let me partake in the Easter feast of sweets without the risk to my health.

She has always felt terribly guilty that her own track record of poor health may have been passed on genetically to me. Likewise I feel guilty because she always appears more concerned with my conditions than her own.-?

She beamed with pride that day as she dealt our individual hands. A box of mixed chocolates for my mother, a large rabbit for my father, a carton of a dozen eggs for my sister and finally an ornately wrapped and quite effeminate package for me.

Despite my cringing, Nan beamed more and more at me.

She took delight in finding just the right gift for me, just as I made sure my Mum always tracked down chocolate coated marshmallows for her each year.

I was unsure what to make of the little basket entwined in several pastel shades of ribbon and its similar coloured contents. They were shaped like eggs, one large one so=urrnded by perhaps a dozen no larger than your thumbnail, but I quickly realised they did not harbour chocolaty goodness.

How could my dear Nan betray me so?

Despite this gross oversight I acted pleasantly surprised, it was very thoughtful after all, just poorly executed.

The pastel coloured eggs were not soft melting chocolate but some hard and tasteless foodstuff that masqueraded as candy.

Somehow still eager to demonstrate how much I loved my dear Nan I bit down on one of the small eggs. My taste buds were not impressed and more importantly one of my teeth was so disappointed it rebelled and broke free.

Oh snap!

Chocolate it seemed had been good for my teeth. It prevented breakage at the hands of the dreaded concrete candy.

This wasn’t the first case of Easter disaster in my family though – at least this time only my supply of chocolate was broken.

***

Several years earlier my family had adopted a joey (baby kangaroo) into our menagerie of animals in various degrees of domestication (from wild birds to dogs and cats via sheep and ducks).

The baby kangaroos mother had been shot by a farmer and a local animal rescue group entrusted my family with its upbringing until it could fend for itself.

It was far too immature to raise itself and apparently with no aunts or Madonna-like kangaroos waiting in the forest to raise the joey we bottle fed it and provided a foster pouch for it to sleep in what was a woollen jumper in a previous life.

As he grew with each passing month so too did Skippy’s appetite for destruction. At first it was cute, he was young and clumsy and he spent his day in the house knocking things over.??

Slowly he became too big for inside and learnt to fend for himself outside. There he took his frustrations out on my mother’s washing that was drying in the sun. Bed sheets in particular incurred his wrath, occasionally towels. He would balance on his powerful tail and launch upward with his back legs lashing out violently at the offending cotton.

My parents often created imaginative Easter egg hunts. Each year was different, sometimes it was an endless stream of clues, other times a scavenger hunt over our large property, as was the case on this occasion.

Or so it was supposed to be.

Sadly as my sister and I ventured outside that morning to hunt for our eggs as instructed we realized chocolate wrapped in brightly coloured shiny aluminium was also on Skippy’s hit list, right next to bed sheets.

Everywhere we looked there had been a massacre.

Foil was shredded and chocolate trampled into the garden beds. Kangaroos are known for their cravings for white bread and other treats, but we’d never heard of chocolate. Lesson learnt.

You would think my tales of Easter and bad times would end there.

You would be wrong.

***

A few years later my parents took my sister and I camping for Easter. We arrived late and set up our tent, my dad a regimented camper had everything labelled and stacked in back of the car and our trailer in the exact order we needed.

Sadly we arrived at night and despite making several lists and packing everything in order we forgot a flashlight.

This would not have been a problem had we arrive on time, but road works and then a flat tire meant arriving at the camp long after sunset.

After eventually pitching the massive tent in the dark we got some sleep.

The following day it began to rain. Not a problem our Rolls Royce of tents was waterproof and able to accommodate a posse of 9.

The follwing night, Easter Saturday, it began to flood.

Eventually I found some sleep and woke on Easter Sunday to a sad look on my Mum’s face and wetness under foot.

Water had found a way in, quite a lot of it apparently.

Sadly my Mum’s clothes bag and the chocolate tucked away between the layers had not found higher ground.

The delicious chocolate had transferred some rather nasty looking stains to the clothes. Aside from the packaging there was no other trace of the chocolate, it had vanished in a series of watery smears.

***

I’m pleased to report my Easter’s since have mostly been trouble free, this Easter I hope they brought a smile to your face. Years later I can’t help but laugh.

This post is a bit of a change from the usual fare. There are plenty of the usual thoughts and advice to come but from now on I will be working in some more stories and as I begin flexing my writing muscle as I turn my attention to writing my first novel. I’d greatly appreciate your feedback as I seek to improve.

Enjoy the holidays and that delicious chocolate.