Easter egg hunts with my cousins were a lot more like cage boxing than gentle competitions. I had more than forty first cousins, mostly wild animals. By the time my aunts and uncles herded them to the scene of the crime, they just opened the car doors and all Hell broke loose. Exhausted from defending themselves and the babies on the ride over, it was every man for himself. God help anybody in the way.
They’d rip through the house under the guise of needing the bathroom and a drink of water, destruction in their wake, before being cast out into the yard like demons into swine. Actually, they were cast out onto the other cousins. We’d get a baseball or football team going, all the big kids on one team, so the little ones never got a chance to bat, or got mowed down in football. They’d go squalling in to their nosy daddies who’d come out long enough to straighten us out a vague semblance of fairness, often lingering to play a while.
Once the egg hunt started, it was chaos. It was survival of the meanest, shoving kids down, stomping eggs little ones dropped, squalling, and even a few bloody noses. Crazy Larry kept trying to pee on us while we were distracted. One aunt in particular didn’t think her big kids ought to have to share at the end of the hunt, even though they had twenty eggs and babies had none. “They found ‘em!” It didn’t matter that she’d only brought a dozen eggs to the hunt.
Ah, family. Better get busy. I have company coming. But not Crazy Larry. He’s in the witness protection program.
Nutsrok 
Forty first cousins. Holy shit,Batman! I thought I had a lot at 14 first cousins. Like your dad I am one of eight!
Great post!
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He was one of seven. All of them had a bunch of kids. It was like the man from St. Ives.
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Bet your family made you really hardy and resilient – two of the best qualities for nurses. One night shift we got to talking about how each of us thinks our own families are batsh*t crazy – but your stories are hysterically funny and probably make most families seem pretty dull:0)).
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It was a mad house
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Too bad they didn’t have family reality television back then….you guys could have made a fortune.
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I am thinking about trying to round a few of them up
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Happy Easter!!! :-)
– James
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U 2
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Sounds like fun!
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It was!
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Great!
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:-D :-D :-D Happy Easter. Have a nice visit with your company.
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Yep… we cannot choose our relatives… just making the best out of them…
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LOL Beth! XD
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Yes! My dad was one of eight, and each of his sibs had what seemed like scores of kids themselves. Most of them were really nice, actually (no peeing that I can recall), but bedlam for sure!
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