Saturday morning Maynard and I did an old fashion radio show. We called it the Q92 Easter Party! It took some planning, but we pulled it off. Since the COVID-19 virus cancelled Easter egg hunts and parades, we thought it would be important to do something fun for the kids on the radio. Mr. Rogers would have been proud of us.

The idea came from Maynard’s wife, Deb, about mid week, after finding out the City of Madison had cancelled the Easter Bunny events. Wednesday Maynard asked me to plan some kid things to do on the radio Saturday morning. We put our heads together and came up with the idea of reading some preschool Easter books, and getting the Madison Library involved in doing that as well. I found some Easter Bunny songs, like, Bunny Hop Hop and The Easter Egg song. Maynard came up with the Chicken Dance song and doing the Hokey Pokey. I told Maynard we can’t forget about Jesus, so I found a cute song called “Jesus is Alive.“

Both of our minds were in full gear, the thinking caps were on and ideas were flying out of our mouths around Thursday. Maynard came up with the idea of parents recording their children doing the Hokey Pokey and the Chicken Dance, then posting them on our KLQP radio Facebook page. I thought that was a brilliant idea! We decided we should give prizes away, and lots of them. I then found hundreds of Easter Bunny jokes on the internet and we had fun just practicing the jokes on each other. The Q92 Easter Party was coming together and I started to get excited for Saturday.

I got to work a little early on Saturday to put all the songs together and put them into the computer. My wife, Roxie, found two excellent Easter children’s books to read on the air. “The Little Blue Easter Egg” written by Sarah Fisch and “Happy Easter Little Critter” by Mercer Mayer. I put my three sheets of jokes together and I was ready. Maynard posted on our Facebook page that we were going on the air starting at 10:30. We went over exactly what we were going to do for the next one and a half hour. We posted our Chicken dance online before we went on the air. I should have practiced the Chicken dance before recording because it was a fail! We were about to entertain small children. I didn’t know how this was going to go. The response that we were about to get was amazing.

We went on the air at 10:30 with a theme song called “Here comes Peter Cottontail” both of us laughed when the song started and I thought to myself, What am I doing? We encouraged parents to record their children dancing to the Hokey Pokey which we were going to play in a few minutes. Also, when the children heard a “Boing, Boing Boing” sound on the radio, which is the Easter bunny hopping, they were to call and win a prize. We played a couple of the songs, Chicka Boom and Spring is Here. Then I had the opportunity to read my book Happy Easter Little Critter. About midway through the book, I realized that I was really getting into it and I kinda of sounded like Mr. Rogers! I was reading really slow and with excitement! I should have started out by saying…” Now boys and girls, Paul is going to read…”

The jokes were so childish, Maynard and I were busting a gut as we read them on the air. Why did the Easter egg hide? It was a little chicken! What’s an Easter eggs least favorite day? Fry-day! What’s the Easter Bunny’s favorite kind of music? Hip-Hop! We had hundreds of them like that. I’m sure the kids enjoyed listening to them.

The phone was ringing off the hook, people were posting their kids videos on our Facebook page! All of them were very creative and fun to watch. We had so much fun doing the show! I know it brought smiles to many faces and it also had Maynard and me smiling. With everyone staying home it was rewarding to me to see mom and dad and kids having fun together. Like I said before, I thought about Mr. Rogers and his career. This is what he did. What a rewarding career he had, to make kids smile. I just had a taste of that Saturday morning and it was fun.