Free-Range Kids

Fire Department Cancels Easter Egg Hunt Because Parents Trampled Each Other in Rush to Make Sure Every Kid Got One

Not getting an egg: the end of the world?

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Egg
Alexander Shalamov

While Christmas has long had the Grinch, at last, Easter has its own cartoonishly rotten holiday-ruiners: the parents in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. Their outrageous Easter egg-grabbing behavior has caused the town's volunteer fire department to cancel its decades-old Easter egg hunt.

"We know that the majority of our community is not the problem but we can't risk injury to children because certain individuals can't control themselves," read a post on the Norco Fire Company's Facebook page.

Apparently "certain individuals" are so desperate to ensure their kids get a gosh darn egg (which they don't believe the child is capable of procuring for him or herself) that they run rabidly through the egg-laden field, trampling less important species—grass, dandelions, other people's children—in the process.

The spokesman for the hunt, Deputy Chief Chuck Hipple told the Reading Eagle (Reading being a town, not a bird who reads): "They go in there and they push and shove. Everybody just runs out there and they knock people over. "

Don't these egg-pluckers understand that:

  • They could just bring their own eggs and put them right in front of their own kid?
  • We're talking about Easter Eggs, not the very last vial of polio antibodies?
  • Their kids are going to turn out just horrible?

In this era of everybody-gets-a-trophy mania, maybe we have to also promise parents that every child gets an egg.

Hipple does hope to reinstate the game in another year or so, after what can only be called a well-deserved parental time-out.