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Ah, the community Easter egg hunt. Is there more of a mixed bag than this adorable spring tradition?

While cute kiddos with festive baskets hunting for colorful eggs is the stuff of Instagram fever dreams, the reality can sometimes be less than picture-perfect. We've all witnessed overzealous parents racing to make sure their kid gets as many eggs as possible, bigger kids swooping in and swiping the prize before a wee one can get to it, less competitive and more reserved kids feeling overwhelmed by the free-for-all chaos, and some children inevitably ending up in tears.

But it doesn't have to be that way. A Netherlands neighborhood egg hunt shared on Facebook highlights how kids can enjoy the thrill of the hunt without the sometimes brutal competitiveness.

Janelle Hanchett moved from California to Haarlem, Netherlands with her husband and four kids two summers ago. Hanchett, who writes about parenting and life at Renegade Mothering, shared that they attended a neighborhood egg hunt this weekend and were happily surprised by how it went down.


"We just had the neighborhood egg hunt and they did it quite differently," she wrote. "The kids run and find eggs but put them in a big communal basket, then they're divided evenly among all the kids. They even include siblings in the neighborhood who weren't even there (being, you know, too 'big' for such things (or having hidden the eggs)). And the little girl too shy to participate. And they all got the exact same number of eggs."

"This is so smart and lovely I have no idea how/why I never thought of it," she continued. "I always hated the competitiveness of egg hunts — the faster or selfish kids grabbing up what they could at any costs. The milder, younger, slower kids left behind. Seriously that shit gave me so much anxiety I could hardly watch egg hunts. I can't understand why I never thought of this."

A fun, cooperative egg hunt? How remarkably civil.

I asked a Dutch-American friend if this is the way it's done in general in the Netherlands, and his friends who live in various parts of the country concurred that yes, this is how they do it.

"Equally shared at the end of the day, no stress at all," wrote one person.

"Otherwise it would end in tears for sure," wrote another.

Well yes, actually. Tears and/or violence. (Google "egg hunt turns violent" for Easter egg kerfuffles that got so bad they made the news. Good times.)

Some people on Hanchett's post mentioned that they do egg hunts similar to the Dutch way. Because my own kids vary in age so much, our family egg hunts have always looked somewhat similar to it as well. We hide a number of eggs that can be evenly divided by the number of kids, and then tell the kids how many eggs they're supposed to find. Once they reach that limit, they can keep searching, but they aren't to give away where any others are hidden unless someone who's still looking asks for help. The kids love it. It's just as much fun, and so much less stress than the every-kid-for-themselves, keep-everything-you-can-find method. But I've never seen it done that way in any community egg hunts.

It's actually not all that surprising that such a reasonable idea comes from the Netherlands, where egalitarian principles are simply a way of life and kids are taught the value of taking care of the whole from a young age.

"If this isn't the most perfect metaphor for how the two countries approach social resources," wrote Hanchett. "Whew. And no, no kid complained or said 'But I found more!' Because that, too, is taught. As easily as we can teach our kids that there isn't enough so they better plow down the little guy to GET THEIRS—rewarding them for being the biggest asshole in the garden—we can teach them that there is absolutely enough if everyone does what they can, throws it in a basket, and passes it around."

Some will undoubtedly look at this idea and say, "Well, that sounds like communism!" but that's a pretty long stretch. This is not a government mandate—it's a society cooperating to make sure that everyone can enjoy the fun and festivity of a kids' holiday activity. This approach tacitly acknowledges that some kids will have a natural advantage, some kids will be overly competitive, some kids don't have the ability (or desire) to grab eggs quickly, etc., and that those realities will lead to a pretty crappy outcome for some kids. The seeking and finding activity itself still allows for those differences, but when you're hunting for the benefit of the whole, the selfish element takes a back seat.

Making an egg hunt a cooperative team event rather than an individual competition may seem like a revolutionary idea, but it's a brilliant one. Thanks for the inspiration, Netherlands!

It's called getting doored. And it hurts.

Imagine that a cyclist is riding along calmly when an unsuspecting driver or passenger opens their door. The cyclist has little to no time to adjust, sending them crashing into or over the door.

It happened to longtime cyclist Derek Cuellar of New York on Sept. 23, 2016.

"A man opened his door right as I was passing and I ran directly into the door," Cuellar said over email. "My bike suffered minor scratches as my handlebar and shoulder took most of the damage."

Despite a bruised shoulder and dinged-up bike, Cuellar was able to continue his commute that day. And while getting doored is a painful rite of passage for many urban cyclists, it doesn't mean it's not a life-threatening issue.

Image via iStock.

Cuellar is one of more than the estimated 50,000 cyclists who will be injured on the road this year.

That number may be even higher; hospital records indicate that only a small percentage of bicycle-accident-related injuries are reported or recorded by police. In the U.S., more than 700 cyclists die in accidents with motor vehicles each year.

It's scary. It's tragic. And in many cases, it's preventable.

Cyclists wipe tears during a ceremony after an accident involving some of Australia's top women cyclists near Gera, Germany. Amy Gillett, 29, was killed when a car struck her group during a training ride a day before a bike race. Photo by Getty Images.

But there's an easy way for drivers and cyclists to share the road, and it's called the Dutch Reach.

Popularized in the Netherlands, where cyclists make up 30% of daily commuters, the Dutch Reach is a concept taught in Dutch driver education, and it's an easy adjustment that could save a life.

If you are a driver or driver-side passenger in a right-side-of-the-road country, you probably naturally open the door with your left hand. However, with the Dutch Reach, you reach across your body to open the door with your right hand, which momentarily forces your body to turn and face backward. If you're getting out on the passenger side, simply open the door with your left hand instead of your right.

That simple twist allows you to see cyclists, cars, or pedestrians you may have otherwise missed. The maneuver make take a few repetitions to get used to, but a little awkwardness is worth it to prevent a potentially catastrophic accident.

If anyone knows about sharing the road, it's the Dutch.

Cycling has long been a popular form of transportation in the Netherlands. But as cars boomed in popularity in the 1950s and '60s, cyclists were quite literally pushed aside. Cars edged out bicyclists (on roads that were not built for automobile traffic) pushing riders toward curbs, resulting in thousands of collisions.

In 1971 alone, 3,300 people, including more than 400 children, were killed in bicycle accidents in the Netherlands. People took to the streets to protest the senseless incidents. This coupled with the oil crisis of 1973 led to serious changes in transportation policies across the small nation.

Protesters meet with Dutch politician Minister Zeevalking to discuss the rash of fatal bicycle accidents involving motor vehicles. The group was called Stop de Kindermoord which translates to "Stop the Child Murder." Photo by Fotocollectie Nationaal Archief/Anefo/Rob Croes via Wikimedia Commons

Slowly, progress was made. Car-free Sundays eventually led to car-free city centers and eventually the dedicated cycle routes many Dutch cities are known for. Today around 180 people are killed in cycling accidents in the Netherlands each year. Considering that residents bike more than 500 miles per year on average, the figure (while devastating) is surprisingly low.

Drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians need to share the responsibility of keeping our roads safe.

Cyclists don't always obey traffic laws and sometimes go dangerously slow or fast in areas they shouldn't. But drivers aren't guilt-free in this regard, either. Parking and driving in bike lanes, shifting without signaling, and driving while distracted or at dangerous speeds make cycling a risky proposition.

Image via iStock.

Whether you're on two wheels, four, or in a fresh pair of Keds, all of us need to pay attention, watch where we're going, and look out for one another. On the road and in life, we're all in this together.

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Everyone stood by as a man drowned. Here's why this refugee jumped in.

While other bystanders pulled out their camera phones, he jumped into a freezing canal.

On Christmas Day, Mohsen Alwais decided to take a road trip to Amsterdam with a group of friends.

Their plan was to walk around, see the city, and enjoy the Christmas lights and celebration.


Mohsen and a friend on their way to see the Christmas lights in Amsterdam. All photos here provided by Mohsen and used with permission.

But that never happened. As soon as the six friends drove into the city, they stopped at a red light and saw a man standing on a bridge and shouting for help.

Mohsen thought maybe a child had fallen into one of Amsterdam’s famous canals. So he and his friends put the hazards on, left their car at the light, and piled out to see what was wrong.

“I looked down,” Mohsen said, “and I saw a Dutch guy, about 55, 60 years old, drowning in the water.”

About 20 people had gathered on the bridge. Most of them were videotaping the floundering man with their mobile phones. But nobody was doing anything.

“He’s drowning, he’s drowning!” shouted Mohsen’s friend, Hala.

Mohsen took off his hat and jacket. A Dutch bystander grabbed him by the shoulder. “Don’t jump in,” he said. “He’ll pull you under and you’ll both drown.”

Mohsen looked down. The man’s head kept slipping below the freezing water. He thought about how the man’s children would feel when their father didn’t come home that night. He imagined them asking, “Where is Daddy?”

He jumped.

“Mohsen had a brave heart, more than me, and he went down quickly,” his friend Nibaal said. “And if Mohsen hadn’t done it, I would have.”

Last year, more than a million refugees crossed into Europe. More than 3 in 4 of them were from the war-torn countries of Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Most of them want what people everywhere want: education, a job, and a home that isn’t being bombed to smithereens. But Europe’s far-right politicians are accusing them of everything from being “testosterone bombs” to trying to establish an Islamic caliphate.

Mohsen is one of those refugees.

In June 2014, he fled the war in Syria. He took a flimsy rubber raft packed with refugees to the Greek island of Samos. In Athens, a smuggler locked him inside a truck crammed with people, and seven horrible days later, he was in the Netherlands. Today he lives in Leiden, about 25 miles southwest of Amsterdam.

Like Mohsen, two of his friends almost drowned on the dangerous journey to reach Europe.

Hala took a raft from Libya to Italy — the deadly Mediterranean passage where 3,771 people drowned last year. Nibaal almost went down between Turkey and Greece.

“As Arabic people, we can’t stand to see a person drowning,” said Nibaal, who is from Damascus. “We can’t ignore it.”

When Mohsen reached the drowning man, he grabbed his right hand and squeezed it to see if he was still alive.

“You’re OK,” he kept saying to the man. “You’re OK.”

“Bravo, habiby, bravo!” Nibaal shouted from the bridge.

Mohsen dragged the man to the stone base of the bridge. Nibaal threw down a rope. Mohsen held the rope with one hand and the man with the other, trying to keep their heads above the freezing water. “He was really heavy,” said Mohsen, “but God gave me strength.”

After about five minutes, two police boats roared up. First they picked up Mohsen and the man he’d just saved. Nibaal followed in a second boat. As he got into the boat, Nibaal looked up. By then, around 200 people were standing on the bridge. As they sped away in the boats, everyone clapped. “It was like a movie,” he said.

Mohsen’s split-second decision probably saved the man’s life.

He got there “just in time,” Dutch police said later. “Otherwise it could have ended differently.” Two weeks later, Mohsen got a big bouquet of Dutch flowers and a letter from Henri Lenferink, the mayor of Leiden.

“As the mayor of the city of Leiden, I am proud that you are a citizen of Leiden!” Lenferink wrote in the letter. “You are a great example for others, both refugees and Dutch citizens.”

But Mohsen says there’s nothing remarkable about what he did.

“These days, many medias and many people are pointing at Muslim people, saying: ‘They are terrorists. It’s the religion of bad actions and killing,’" he said. "And I would just like to say no ... I am a Muslim, and I could help a non-Muslim guy. That’s what my religion asks me to do.”

Mohsen's dream is to keep helping people by designing prosthetic hands that work with neural impulses from the brain.

He's a trained biomedical engineer, and last year he started a charity to provide support to other Syrian refugees and hopefully take some pressure off the Dutch government.

“European countries are giving a lot of things to refugees,” says Mohsen. “They give us all kinds of support.”

Saving the drowning man was something anyone would have done, he says, but for him it was also “something to return, some small thing to do for Dutch people.”