Personal Essay: An Easter Memory

Pop-up Easter Egg Hunt

Words and Image by Gretchen Gales
QuailBellMagazine.com

Easter Sunday about two years ago, I was teaching Sunday school to an elementary level class at my church. I brought adorable Noah’s Ark eggs I had purchased for the kids as a treat. I’m certain I taught a lesson about the Resurrection. The problem was I taught an early morning class with a small amount of students. Therefore, the amount of eggs left over was absolutely ridiculous.

The last thing I needed was more clutter around the house. At the same time, I wasn’t going to waste those eggs. Then I got one of my legendary brilliant ideas.

I took the leftover eggs and drove over to my friend Sarah’s house. By now, she and her family were used to being the target of odd shenanigans, especially from me. I knew they were probably still at church, so I parked my car in the driveway and took the eggs out of my car. At first I tried to strategically hide them. I lined some up on the porch steps, in the crevices of the oak tree in the front, within the flowers, anywhere. Then I just got lazy and threw them haphazardly on the ground and hoped the squirrels wouldn’t eat the Smarties and Double Bubble inside some of the eggs.

For some reason I don’t remember, I had chalk in my trunk and decided to incorporate that into the egg hunt. I drew colorful parking spaces around the parked cars and wrote silly messages all over the driveway.

As I became more and more paranoid that they would arrive, I made my final drawings and wrote my last messages. I couldn’t wait for them to see what I had done.

I waited. No text.

I couldn’t believe it. Every time something weird happens, she tended to send me a text either explaining what happened. Maybe she hadn’t come home. No, they would have come home after church. I still waited. Then I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Did you enjoy the Easter egg hunt?” I asked Sarah.

“Wait…it was you?!” she said, shocked.

“Guilty.”

She explained to me that they all thought her brother Jack had done it. He’d been the Easter bunny for a couple of years for church events and they assumed he took it to a new level. But he denied it. Then they came to the conclusion it was just some really nice stranger that left the eggs and masterful artwork out for them.

It actually worked out perfectly. Their neighbor has a young son that took advantage of the pop-up Easter egg hunt and happily took all of the eggs. Sarah and her family were left with my chalk art…

Until it rained. 

#Real #PersonalEssay #Easter #EggHunt #Pranks #Silly #YoungAtHeart 

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