EASTER THOUGHTS

I am off today for Good Friday. I don't really do anything to observe Good Friday except take off work if they let me. I think most of our employees think it is Good Friday because it is good to be off work on Good Friday.

I have decided to use Good Friday to get in the mood for Easter. Those of you who know me know I have a little trouble getting into the holiday spirit for, well, every holiday.

The first thing I did is to think what I did for Easter when I was a child. Unfortunately, I could not really remember anything terribly fun or meaningful. I'm sure we did the Easter bunny thing, but I don't remember it. It could be that I blocked it out in embarrassment.

I do remember a couple of things about Easter as a teenager. The first memory is getting a new green blazer to wear. Easter had a lot to do with clothes as I remember. It was the first Sunday that girls and women brought out their spring or summer clothes. There were also lots of hats when I was younger, and sometimes gloves. I miss gloves. Only the white ones. I thought Jackie Kennedy was really stylish because she wore white gloves a lot.

The other thing I remember is being tortured. It seems some one put together one of those massive Easter pageants in Eastland County, and performed it on a farm at dawn on Easter morning.

They had trumpet players, and one year one of them wised up and quit. I somehow got drafted to take his place. There were 3 of us. We had to go out there and stay for hours in the dark for rehearsal. There were about 100 scenes in this play. You sat in a tent and waited for your scene. Someone would call them out. Then you would go to the stage and do your thing.

As trumpeters, we were some kind of heralds. I think we were in scene 1, 47, 83 and 100. As a horn player, and given that it was cold enough to make you think it was a pagan holiday, we would start blowing into our horns a few scenes in advance to warm them up. We could not play them, because the audience would hear the noise. Then we went out to the stage and went "ta da ta DAAAAAAA" really loud.

Then we went back to the tent and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Why do people do these things?

Now, my church has a massive Easter pageant. It has about 100 scenes.

I am not in it.