And yet I keep going to them. Every few years, like they’re going to change. This time it’ll be different! Or perhaps I’ve just been unlucky. But nope. Same, survival of the fittest paradigm on display. Bigger, faster wins the day again, wire to wire.
Friends keep telling me, “Oh we went to such a nice one, there was no pushing and they separated all the age ranges and everybody had a swell time!” Maybe they don’t actually say ‘swell’ but that’s all I always hear, and imagine their breath smelling like Bloody Mary’s and crepe and Xanax. They were looking the other way, and everything seemed to be fine as far as they could tell, and the vodka and Xanax help, is all I can think. You are full of crepe and crap.
The very first one I went to with Sophie was beautiful. Gorgeous spring day on the grass, my 3 year-old baby girl in her bright blue and yellow Easter dress, smiling and waiting for the hunt to begin. Gazing at the bright green lawn dotted with hundreds, maybe thousands of pastel eggs full of candy. Eager and peaceful and happy. One of the grand things we look forward to when we finally get to be parents.
Lots of kids, too many kids, I realized as I looked around nervously. More than this little cow town could possibly contain. At least they “hid” a boatload of eggs. I’ll walk with Sophie and shepherd her to a few of them. These little Los Osos kids will be kind and fair. Plenty of lawn, plenty of eggs. Plus they’re going to give the little ones a full minute’s head start. It won’t be too bad.
Except for the fact that Sophie at that age was the most shy and demure little kid ever. Always the last in line, always the one that never got the snack or the treat or the prize. Made me so insane, so crazy, so frustrated, aimed impossibly at both her and the world. And here we are at the next survival test, grand old Eastertime. Get it while you can.
Sure enough, the moment the first little kids started their amble for their few eggs, the bigger kids bum rushed them. 5 full seconds had gone by, we hadn’t even made it to the first egg, and here came the sugar-rushed pre-teens with big baskets and crazed looks in their eyes. No one to stop them, except the master of stupid ceremonies who was waving his arms haplessly way behind them, plausibly out of sight and earshot. Can’t stop progress.
Sophie bent down to pick up an egg, smile wide and bright as if she had discovered the first Easter egg ever. Just as she was about to grab it, an 11 year old boy snatched it from under her, nudging her as he sprinted by. She fell back on her butt and started to cry. I snarled at him, but he just looked back and laughed a little shrug. I considered chasing the little asshole down and tackling him, but there were too many witnesses and most of them probably wouldn’t see things my way, anyway. So I just picked Sophie up and tried to hustle to the other eggs that were being vacuumed up by the wall of children sprinting through the field.
10 minutes, two eggs, and a quietly weeping Sophie later, we were back to the car.
“Does kids awe mean,” Sophie said as I buckled her in her carseat.
“I know. We’ll have your candy when we get home. You gotta get in there when you want something, girl.”
She just teared up again and I vowed, never, ever again.
So here we are again. Every 3 years or so, apparently. Long enough for me to have forgotten the misery and the last one (although Lilah at least pushed back and wrestled for a few eggs that year. Youngest sibling phenomenon.) Standing at the top of the bluff in the glorious rolling green hills outside San Luis Obispo. The driving range on the Dairy Creek Golf Course, littered with an equal amount of golf balls and white eggs. Thousands and thousands of them.
Apparently the word had gotten out. There must have been a good 400 kids loitering around, waiting for some gunshot to start. I had figured this might be a good idea but no, another of my decisions justifiably open to ridicule. An out of town, poorly publicized Easter egg hunt in our sparsely populated county? Sounds great! Wait, is this Dad’s idea? Keep me at home, you guys. When I try to do stuff it ends badly.
Just like the other “hunts” tucked in my foggy memory, there was a first section for the under 5 and then the sprawling rest of the range for the larger and faster. It was 11:44, one minute until go time, and the kids were swelling around the tee boxes like a tiny, well-dressed mob about to mount a pastel takeover. Half the kids were in their Sunday best. Half were heathens there just for the eggs. You could easily spot them. Some still had pajamas on.
The giant stuffed bunny made his sweaty way from the picture area to the range, followed by an admiring horde of preschoolers. Led by the man in charge, a short man with a comb-over and a undersized bullhorn, the crowd parted ways for them with excited murmurs. We who are about to die salute you! And the bunny!
He pointed the bullhorn to the left, the middle, and the right, so each of us only got a segment of his politely-toned directions. Our left section heard the first part, which was the barely audible, “Please wait until the Bunny…” and then pointed away from us to the rest of the swelling Easter mass, for their part of the inaudible and incomplete message.
The Easter bunny started walking towards the fields, either to get in a starting position or escape the whole situation. Whatever the reason, that was enough of a flinch for a few of the 10 year old boys up front. They were off, running down the hillside and collecting eggs effortlessly through the toddler area even on a dead run. Despicable, but amazingly effective.
And that was enough for the rest of the children waiting. With a cry worthy of a Roman army phalanx rushing to their fame and demise, the rest of the children followed suit. They rushed down the hillside like a great wall of water, gobbling up everything in their pastel path.
I watched Sophie and Lilah cut around the younger area, both sprinting with their baskets, to catch up to the first wave of the locusts already picking up the eggs as fast as they could. No more prodding from Daddy, no more worries about being run over. They were in front of the line and weren’t going to be bum rushed this year.
I suppose that was something I could be almost happy with. Console myself with. But not when I watched the whole thing, with about 100 kids left behind that were too small and slow to be a part of the advancing plague that had swept down the valley. Tiny girls in little dresses, small boys in miniature button downs. Their parents desperately trying to find them some eggs (of which there were none, the precocious pestilence was amazingly efficient and had claimed all candy-filled white eggs while spitting out all white golf balls) and keep the weeping to a minimum. Another Easter egg hunt turned into a mob scene. Survival of the fittest. To the victor goes the foil wrapped chocolates.
My daughters came back, proud of their aggressiveness and speed and wasn’t I? They were breathing hard with wide smiles and their baskets were bulging with eggs. And then we walked back up the hill, passing the victims of the battle, little kids crying with their parents consoling them while casting burning aspersions at the big kids, gloating with their haul as they sauntered back.
“You guys should give some of your eggs to the really little kids that didn’t get any. They got trompled by the big kids. Besides there’s no way you’re gonna eat all that candy.”
They both looked at their baskets for a minute. Their recent spoil already being given away by their sucker of a Father. Boy he can ruin a moment, can’t he?
Then we walked past a tiny girl in a pink dress with bunny ears strapped to the top of her head. Her face was pointed down in her empty basket, and her Dad had her arm around her.
“Here you go,” Sophie said, lightly dropping a handful of eggs in her basket. Lilah followed with a couple of her own, and the teary smile from the little girl coupled with the sighed gratitude from the father made everything more than worthwhile.
They run back up the hillside like little Easter egg Robin Hoods, righting wrongs, redistributing the wealth all the little bastards had taken from all the littler bastards, skipping and jumping happily all the way.
“We have too much! We should give to some of the kids that don’t have any,” Lilah said and ran off and the event was salvaged.
So we did get something from the giant Easter egg hunt fiasco. My little girls got to make other tiny people happy. Stop tears. Discover their own tiny version of Marxism.
But seriously, fuck Easter egg hunts. This is my last year. This time I mean it.
Note to self: do. not. go. to. public. easter. egg. hunts.
Thanks, Big Brother!
XOXO
I think Daddy’s idea worked out fine…all of them in fact. The world doesn’t always work out the way we hope, but that doesn’t mean we don’t keep trying to make it better. I have never seen my girls happier than when they were spreading their bounty to those tiny people who hadn’t “won” the race. But you don’t know to do that unless you have, at some point, been the one who didn’t win the race…and some adult who should know better suggests that maybe you don’t need all the eggs!!