BennyEast.Com/Blog The official blog of Kenny West

An Easter Story

So it’s Easter.  Or, ok it was Easter yesterday… since it’s after midnight now.  I dropped the ball… or egg on this one.  Hey what’s the deal with eggs and bunnies anyways?  I don’t know…  If anyone knows please let me know!

But in the meantime… here’s a little old Easter story from when I was a kid…

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

So I was maybe 5 or 6… the local park where we used to live would have an Easter egg hunt every year.  It was massive.  There were literally probably thousands of kids hunting around this park looking for eggs.

Truth be told it was just a good way for the parents to get rid of their kids for a short while so they could have a little bit of peace and time to themselves.

So we would get dropped off at this thing… my bro and sis and I and a thousand other kids.  And we would just be plopped into this big sectioned off area in the middle of this field.  Oh, yea I almost forgot, the first thing we had to do was walk around in a parade since we were all in bunny costumes and we were all so “cute”.  The parade took about a half hour.  But after that we were all put into this central fenced off area.  There was some dude with a whistle and someone else with a bullhorn… and someone else with a clipboard.  And some other dude with a walkie-talkie… and then some others with a combination of those…

AND THEN there was ONE person… some lady… who had ALL OF THOSE…

Now, this is how you KNOW you are important.  If you ever find that you have all of the following things at your job… you know you rate…

-A whistle

-A clipboard

-A walkie-talkie

AND

-A bullhorn

That’s it… you are the boss head sauce.  And don’t let anyone ever tell you any different!  If they try to just refer them to this blog post.

So this lady with all of those things would basically stand there next to a person in a Easter bunny costume and read out the rules… which of course none of us listened to anyways, because when you are 5 the only thing you hear is…

Candy candy candy… candy candy… candy candy candy…

Did you hear all that?  Does anyone have any questions??

Yes… can I collect candy in my basket yet?!?!?!

Of course there were a thousand 3-10 year olds all asking that same question… except maybe there was one kid doing the pee pee dance and asking where the bathroom was, but obviously he was over looked… but how can you answer anyone when you have a thousand 3-10 year olds dressed up in Easter costumes all holding baskets of different shapes and sizes with eyeballs the size of softballs and mouths drooling wanting to know when they can run around after the hidden eggs filled with candy.

You understand what kind of picture I’m painting here now?

So… frustrated, and defeated that her whistle-wearing/clipboard-holding/walkie-talkie-talkying/bullhorn-shouting powers have absolutely no effect on those under the age of 10 (the only exception to the “rate” rule), the lady, throws down her clipboard and gives the parents a “WHY AM I IN CHARGE OF THIS WHILE YOU ARE ALL SITTING ON THE SIDELINES IN LAWN CHAIRS SIPPING ICE COLD BEVERAGES” look… just pulls out her stop watch… Picks up the bull horn… and SHOUTS AS LOUD AS SHE CAN INTO IT…

Oh real quick… Add stopwatch to the list.  So if you have a stopwatch as well…

You rate above and beyond (again, only if your raters are above the age of 10).

Ok… sorry… where was I?

Ah, yes…

THE LADY SHOUTS INTO THE BULLHORN… 5 MINUTES!!!  GO!!!!

Ready?  This, is about to get ugly.

Now… LET ME TELL YOU.  This is probably the absolute definition of CHAOS…

Picture… the following…

Kids crashing into each other left and right, fighting over eggs, stealing from one another… Yelling, screaming, kicking, hollering, pulling hair, pulling diapers, pulling fits… Moms and Dads jumping in to defend their kids… moms and dads stealing eggs from other kids… other moms and dads stealing eggs from those moms and dads…

Easter at it’s finest.  Yes.  Ladies and Gents.  Ah, a nice and pleasant Easter egg hunt for the young-ins.

This… is… Easter in Southern California.  This is the Great Easter Egg Hunt of my childhood memories.  Fantastic.

Eventually at some point the stopwatch wearing, bullhorn welding, walk talkie holstering, whistle blowing, clipboard holding referee MISSES MCGEE I HAVE AN EASTER EGG DEGREE comes running out to the middle of the egg hunt to end it all.

“EVERYONE STOP!!!!  Whatever you are currently holding on to is yours to keep!”

Well, I HOPE SO… because while everyone is holding on to baskets full of plastic eggs filled with chocolates… I’m holding on to my ummm… well ya know… “My stuff”.

Yes… I was the one kid who had to go to the bathroom the whole darn time.  So ALL I COULD THINK WAS “I hope I get to keep this!  Because it’s out of the question for me to have to give it back.  And I will need this later on in life.”

At some point in the chaos I had actually lost my basket (another kid came up and took it… he was bigger than me, so I let him have it… also I was concentrating on more pressing matters).  So the only thing I was able to grab was some little plastic golden egg with a little piece of paper in it the size of a fortune cookie fortune.

Actually, come to think of it, I didn’t even grab the egg… I pretty much just stood in one place the whole time doing the wee wee dance and some kid I think felt sorry for me and came up to me and gave me that egg because it was light as a feather and  he knew it had no chocolate in it.

Great… no chocolate for me.  Just a fortune.  If I wanted a fortune I would have gotten Chinese food… except I’m 5 so I probably wouldn’t have.   But, you know what I’m saying…

I WANTED CHOCOLATE!  I feel cheated!

So what was on the little paper?  It just said “winner”…

Winner?  What the heck does that mean??!?!  Clipboard lady said NOTHING about this in her little speech!  Or did she?  I don’t know, I wasn’t listening.  But she probably said nothing about this.  I’m guessing she said nothing about this.

So I’m standing there.  Trying to tell everyone about how I REALLY just needed to use the bathroom.  When all of a sudden the bullhorn lady is shouting in her megaphone thing next to me and the guy in the bunny suit is shaking my hand congratulating me and handing over to me a basket that is bigger than me and the growing group of kids gathering around me combined.

I literally couldn’t carry this thing on my own and had to have people help me carry it.  It weighed more than I did.

Turns out it wasn’t a fortune cookie fortune after all… it was the one single special grandprize first place ticket winner for the whole darn egg hunt.

Yep.  I won it all.  I got my picture in the paper with the Bunny.  And I was the talk of the preschool for the next month!   But most important, I finally got to use the bathroom.  Which to me at the time was 10 times better than winning some giant basket filled with a thousand pieces of chocolate (which took me a year and a half to eat, and we had to freeze the whole thing and eat it little bits at a time).

So I think what I’ve walked away with from that experience as a young lad was…

If you stand in one place and endure the chaos around you long enough…

Eventually good things will come to you.

And you know, most of the time I believe that’s very true.  Well, at least the opportunity will be there.  You just have to reach out and grab it.

Also… focus on not peeing your pants in front of thousands of people.  Just as important.