Usually, it’s the Easter Bunny doing the hiding.
But seriously, somebody should have hid the fire water from these two drinking bunnies…
“Hide my presents and then I can search for them like a pirate searches for treasure!”
The Elder, our older daughter, was celebrating her 8th birthday at the beach and was understandably overly-excited and full of um…”interesting” ideas for the present-opening portion of the festivities. Now, in fairness, hiding her gifts and then sending her on a scavenger hunt wasn’t that bad of an idea…had 1) we been in a familiar location, & 2) us adults had some time to prepare ahead of time. Without those two pre-conditions, though, the whole scheme could quickly become much more of a dubious endeavor.
But fortunately, I have enough life experience under my belt to foresee how this seemingly fun and cheeky idea could turn out to be a darker shade of shenanigan. So I waved The Elder over and said, “Come young lass, I have a very important story to share with you…”
Back in my early grad school years when I was a single young buck, I would spend my holidays with either my brother (One Skinny Jay) or sister, who lived near each other in Virginia. One particular Easter we were at my sister’s place out in the country, and 1SJ had brought the wife and kids over that morning to celebrate.
And celebrate we did–it seems that us bros had the idea that there was no better way to commemorate the rising of the Lord Jesus Christ than raising a few bottles of booze “in remembrance of Him.” Further, just like Jesus’ female fans found His grave empty early that Sunday morning, we made sure that we likewise found our previously-full bottles empty this fine Sunday morning.
Oh, what’s that? Oh. You wanted to know how the kids celebrated, not the adults? Gotchya.
Well, seeing as how there were 5 of my nieces and nephews running around by that point, it was only logical that us adults hosted an Easter Egg hunt, a classic neo-Pagan American vernal pastime, indeed.
Our sister, seemingly the only responsible adult present that day, had filled up a bunch of brightly colored plastic eggs the night before with candies, quarters, and one-dollar bills, so us boyz only had to hide them in her front yard. It should come as no surprise (or maybe it does) that we knocked out our part of the bargain lickety-split without any trouble.
In less than 5 minutes we had hid all 25 eggs in and under the porch, in the thick half-dead grass, and in/under/around the small lone tree that stood in her yard. Given how starkly featureless the space we had to work with was, we were actually a bit proud of ourselves for finding hiding spots for all of them. Patting ourselves on the backs, we called the butt-munchkins1This is a bespoke portmanteau, created by yours truly for his siblings children, an amalgamation of the words “butt-munch” and “munchkins”. out into the yard and let them go buck-wild with their Easter baskets.
After all was said and done, we sat around the dining room table, eating ham sandwiches and deviled eggs, helping the kiddos sort through all their loot. Eventually, when we compared notes, we discovered that only 21 eggs had been successfully recovered. Not wanting to leave any valuable booty left undiscovered in the yard, me and 1SJ headed back out to there, bottles o’ rum in hand.
We quickly found one of the stray eggs, but the other 3…well, even after another 20 minutes of combing through the yard, we simply could not figure out where the hell they could have disappeared to. I mean, c’mon, there was 1 porch, 1 tree, and…grass. They couldn’t have gone too far, right? Apparently that logic wasn’t as air-tight as one might guess.
We finally had to call off the search for the sake of our sanity, and all agreed that we would just chalk this loss up to the alcohol. Still to this day, though, we still wonder if there is unclaimed silver doubloons languishing in oblivion at the bottom of her yard…
The point of the story is you probably should avoid the responsibility of hiding the kids’ Easter Eggs if you’ve been day-drinking (again). But, if you do, drink & hide responsibly–make a map of your treasures as you go, you big enebriated pirate, you!
Content created on: 18 March 2021 (Thursday)
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