Except .. they weren’t turkeys. They were eggs. Plastic easter eggs. Dropped from a helicopter.

The idea behind the Cartersville EggDrop was to replace the old boring egg-hunt thing with a helicopter dropping 10k Easter eggs onto a small section of a football field. After the event a neighbor said to me after the egg hunt, this had to be an Easter egg hunt engineered by men with no women involved. I added that it was most likely ex-military men.

He’s got a point.

The first sign of a plan gone wild revealed itself as we approached a fenced-in football field that already held about 5.000 crammed-in people. My first instinct was to turn and run, but I doubt that I could have explained my flight to the 5-year-old with a vice grip on his Easter basket . EggDrop ground zero was the 50 yard line, and it was surrounded by yellow event tape at a radius of about 20 yards. When the helicopter made its first pass, that yellow event tape was no match for the thousands of screaming kids who burst through to catch the falling plastic eggs. The real problem, though, was that the organizers had not expected that the first drop of around 700 eggs would pelt moms, dads, and unsuspecting eight-year-olds.

I would never … never … have expected that result.

At one point, I ran over to M-I [3]

They had a helicopter and a tank? That is all kinds of awesome. God Bless the South. [1]

and tried to explain to him that no parent is going to leave the field without the right wounded children, myself included. I further pleaded with him to radio the helicopter and ask them to hold off dropping any eggs until things could be sorted out. He informed me that he did not have radio contact with the helicopter.

Say ‘hello’ to my good buddy, Murphy!

As I pushed my way to the 48 yard line, I saw my two boys sitting on the ground crying. Meanwhile, goofy old Ray Liotta [2] in the helicopter was circling with another drop of about 700 more plastic eggs, which cascaded onto the field amidst rippling pops as the egg shells bouncing off every man, woman, and child.

It ended well – in that John escaped with his kids. I did some due diligence via Google and, sure ’nuff, there was a helicopter drop of eggs and there was a fair amount of chaos, confusion and general hurly-burly.

[1] I mean this sincerely.
[2] Not really Ray Liotta – but that would have been a nice touch. John bypassed the obvious ‘Turkeys Away‘ reference and compared the situation to ‘Operation Dumbo Drop‘
[3] On further review this isn’t really a tank – I have no idea what he’s talking about. But a tank would have been cool.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.