Sam Venable  

Special Contributor

Ahh, the smell of spring is once again upon us, and I don’t just mean the smell of flowers.

Thanksgiving smells like roast turkey and sweet potato casserole. Christmas smells like cedar and balsam. The Fourth of July smells like watermelon and charred meat—animal or human, depending on what touches the grill first.

But Easter always smells like vinegar.

If you have to ask why, go make an appointment with a shrink. Quickly. You surely had a deprived childhood, and it’s important to vent these frustrations before things get any worse.

Vinegar is an integral part of Easter because that’s what mothers everywhere use when they mix dye for Easter eggs. Don’t ask me why. I’m sure some high-flung chemical reaction must occur before those little colored pellets dissolve and impart their hues to the shells of eggs.

Never question this phenomenon. Just accept it as one of the many secrets of life that must be taken on faith. Sorta like how you can open the refrigerator door and there’s always beer inside.

When you think about it, Easter egg dyeing is not that exciting. In fact, it’s rather gross—especially if your eggs happened to crack during the boiling process and the dye leaks inside and streaks the white part. I’d rather eat a roach than a three-day-old, room temperature, green and yellow, streaked, hardboiled egg that has been hidden six times behind a fencepost near places where cows have paused to meditate.

I think the real reason kids love to dye Easter eggs is because it’s such a limited activity. You only get to do it once a year. If parents had any sense, they’d use the same logic in other areas of child-rearing. Like trying to get kiddies to eat disgusting food:

“Mommy, how much longer until Boiled Rutabaga and Cauliflower Day?”

“Oh, it’s a full week, honey. Try not to think about it, and it’ll come sooner.”

“But, Mommy! Can’t I have just a little taste right now? Pleeeeeze?”

“No, dear. You’ll have to wait. It wouldn’t be fair to your brothers and sisters to cheat, would it? When Boiled Rutabaga and Cauliflower Day finally arrives, you can eat all you want.”

“Oh, goody! I’m not going to eat any candy for a whole week, just so I’ll have more room for a fourth helping of boiled rutabagas and cauliflower!”

See what I mean?

But the real reason I have mixed feelings about Easter eggs is because mine never turned out the way they looked on the dye package.

Sure, your basic one-color egg wasn’t a chore. All you had to do was seat an egg in the bent-wire holder and dunk it into a cup of dye and let it sit while you read two pages of Sunday funnies. The longer you read (and it bathed), the deeper the color. Big deal.

What I always wanted was one of those gorgeous, rainbow striped eggs, the sort of thing Karl Faberge would have created for a Russian czar.

First, I would take a clear wax pencil and inscribe the outside of the shell with intricate designs.

Then, using the bent wire holder, I would dunk it in various positions in different dyes. That was to create the rainbow effect.

But it never worked for me. The hateful egg always emerged looking like a bruise.

Every time she saw my bruise-colored eggs, my sister would make fun of me. But I could always get the last laugh.

I would just remind her of the time she was a little girl and thought the colored pellets were candy and ate a handful of them and scared Mama half to death because she thought her baby had been poisoned.

No harm done, of course. The stuff was only food coloring. A day later, nature took its course, and the entire episode had a happy ending.

Quite a colorful one, too.

Sam Venable is an author, stand-up comedian, and humor columnist for the Knoxville (TN) News Sentinel.

He may be reached at mahv@outlook.com.