The Violent Easter Egg Hunt

Easter Egg Hunt

By: Brandon Sharp

One Saturday before Easter, my wife and our daughter went to a county-wide Easter egg hunt. As we pulled in the driveway, I saw all the little children, complete with the cute, little, fake grass-filled baskets.
Now, if you must know, I was once a great Easter egg hunter. I found the most eggs ever three years in a row during easy little matches with my school and church. Then I decided to challenge myself. I entered a contest with professional egg hunters and won every time. After that, I just quit.
I expected nothing less from my daughter. As we exited the car, the founder of the hunt greeted us. Then, we readied out daughter for it.
“Remember what we talked about on the way over?” I asked her.
“Have good sportsmanship?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I expect to see some pushing, some shoving, basket whacking, a little bit of blood, and most of all, a full basket. Do you understand?”
“Uh-huh,” she nodded her head.
She went to stand with her competitors. We went to stand with the parents. They were all bunched up. An idea entered my head.
“Tara,” I tried to grab her attention. She looked over, and I motioned with my head at my foot. I put it over in front of my wife’s so she would trip if she moved forward. Tara did the same to a little boy beside her.
“Ready! Get set! Go” The woman fired a gun. Though it didn’t, Tara acted as if it had startled her and hit a girl with her basket, bloodying her nose. That’s my girl! I thought. All the kids took off. The boy fell, taking three others with him. Tara ran to get the first egg. After that, they were flying into her basket.
A dad beside me saw her amazing progress and said, “She’s good.”
“Of course. She’s been through some of the most rigorous training for this,” I answered. The man edged away from me, freaked out as he was.
Tara spotted another egg, but another kid was going for it. “Run for it!” I shouted.
She ran as fast as she could. “Pick those legs up! Stretch that stride!” She beat the little kid. “Yes!” she yelled and dropped the egg in her basket.
She ran off to find some more. A little toddler bent over to pick one up, and I thought that she was going to let it have the egg! In the end, she came through by kicking it in the face and running off with it. “You go girl!” my wife encouraged her. People were beginning to stare at her and us.
A boy about her age who thought that he could do so much better than her beat her to the egg. She was not going to let that happen. Using her basket, she began whacking him over the head until he relinquished the egg unto her. Not a single egg fell out of her basket!
The most memorable moment of all was when a girl in a little dress had an egg in her hand, ready to drop it in her basket. Tara rammed her; the egg flew from her hand. Another boy caught it. She had obviously remembered the thumbs on the Adam’s apple technique I taught her. Tara pounced on him. “Submit!” she yelled in the boy’s face. He just let the egg roll from his hand. She got it right when the whistle blew to signal that the hunt was over.
Tara won in the end, finding 303 out of 500 eggs. She got $25 for winning. We said our “Good-byes” and drove off, leaving tracks that seemed to say suck my eggs!