If there were a club for professional Easter Bunnies, I would be President with vested longevity. I’ve been stuffing colorful plastic eggs for the last fifteen years and I’m only twenty-five; that’s more than half my life spent playing Easter Bunny.
It all started that one year when I was ten years old. My mother had asked me the night before Easter if I wanted to “help” her prepare the mornings’ festivities for my younger brothers and I naively accepted with an excited smile, not knowing that “help” her was code for being trained to pick up her Bunny duties. She hovered over me like a drill sergeant showing me how to make sure the plastic egg halves matched, how to properly fill the eggs with a proportioned amount and types of assorted candies and how to appropriately hide the eggs throughout the house, in every room and outside in the yard.
After the eggs were done came the baskets. First stuff the bottom with strands of plastic faux grass, then pile on a crafty arrangement of toys and candy topped off with clear, color tinted novelty wrap. It sounds and looked a lot easier than it was – it sucked so bad that as an adult I have vowed to never allow that cellophane crap wrap inside my house. I failed miserably at the basket making but my supportive mother was convinced that if she screamed at me enough times, cursed and made me re-do it six-thousand times at 3am that eventually I would finally create the perfect Easter Basket. Nope, I still sucked at basket making.
As the years went on, my mother grew to trust my bunny abilities and gave me full responsibility. By thirteen years old, I stood up until 3am stuffing and hiding eggs to her satisfaction while she kept watch that my brothers were fast asleep in their beds. And, by “kept watch”, I mean with her eyes closed, full out snoring, lost in dreamland. My baskets still sucked, so I made sure I hid them in the best hiding places that way by the time my brothers (who were only 7yrs and 4yrs at the time) found them, the excitement and giving a shit about Easter Bunny Technicalities had worn off and I wouldn’t be ordered to have my head chopped off by the Easter Queen. What do you mean it takes a four-year-old six hours to find his basket hidden inside the clothes dryer in the laundry room, who knew? ;)
The worst part of being the Easter Bunny in your own childhood isn’t staying up eating M&Ms until 3am – I mean, stuffing eggs; it isn’t having to hide hundreds upon hundreds of eggs to your mother’s satisfaction and expectations while she sleeps soundly in her bed; the worst part of being the Easter Bunny in your own childhood is waking up after only 2 hours of sleep to the excited, smiling faces of your little brothers chanting “The Easter Bunny came! The Easter Bunny came! Get up! Get up! The Easter Bunny came!” and then having to drag your sorry ass out of bed and PRETEND to find the eggs you just spent all night stuffing and hiding, and the entire time you’re hunting for said eggs maintaining a shit eating grin because the Easter Bunny came! Guess what little fuckers; the Easter Bunny is going to come for the next five days as we’re still finding plastic eggs in strange places well after Easter. Yes, the 5 second rule applies only AFTER you open the egg, so you can still eat candy up to six months after Easter. Not sure if I actually heard that somewhere or just made it up now – but who cares, it’s your stomach, not mine – enjoy!
It’s different now that I have my own kids. I have a loving husband to help me stuff and hide the eggs for our beautiful children in our house. Yeah right Jayde; put the crack pipe down…… and welcome back to Easter Bunny Hell that is your reality. Now that I have my own kids, I get to go shopping for Easter without the kids… you know, during the time designated for me to be at the gym instead, doing something for MYSELF. I get to spend my money on their Easter stuff. I get to really hide their Easter stuff somewhere that they can’t find it before Easter and have to repeat that whole scenario all over again, which would really suck since I usually wait until three days before Easter to start shopping in the first place. Then I get to clean the house so the Easter Bunny can come bring eggs.. this is the part where I usually lose my husband, Eddie. Every year he somehow magically gets EXHAUSTED at 8pm and can’t help himself from falling asleep in our comfy bed awaiting a visit from the Easter Bunny. Then I get to sit up by myself stuffing and hiding eggs. At least I don’t have to wake up and pretend to find them in 2 hours.
Not one egg is mix matched, the eggs each have the proper amount of candy and the time is ticking. Somewhere between 1am and 2am I no longer want to nail Eddie to a cross and stab his eyes out with thorns…2am has a magical way of making me happy that I’m good at what I do.. and then by 2:45am I am at my wit’s end making tootsie roll bombs. What is a tootsie bomb? It’s an oversized plastic egg. My Dad use to incorporate them into our egg hunts as a “bonus,” having better prizes inside than the regular plastic eggs in the hunt. By 2:46am I took them bonus eggs and stuffed them with a pound of tootsie rolls in a last resort desperate effort to get to bed before the kids woke up.
What about the baskets? What baskets? No baskets. BACKPACKS. Its genius. Backpacks have zippers, no ghetto plastic wrap needed. I stuffed new clothes, bikinis, water toys and even a pink baseball bat into my backpack version of an Easter Basket. Was it lazy? Sure it was, but admit it – its BRILLIANT. Best part – now when I take the kids to the beach/park/gym they can tote their own shit around. Take that Mom and your stupid fucking plastic wrap!
My family might not care if the floors are washed for Easter Morning, I’m pretty convinced my kids would eat candy off a sand-covered floor and not mind the extra crunching, but this Easter Bunny aims for perfection – I’m not hopping around shaking my cottontail unless everything is perfect. I hid hundreds of eggs this year; I lost count at eight-hundred something. I had ¼ of the box left of eggs that needed to be matched and stuffed when I said to myself “fuck it, that’s good enough.” Hey, we all have our pastel breaking point. I hid eggs all throughout my house in semi-hidden places for my oldest daughter and in obvious places for the little ones. So many bright colors it looked like the 1980s threw up in my living room and flooded my kitchen before making it down the hall and spray painting my bathroom. I was going to hide eggs outside but that idea sounded better at 11pm than it did at 3am, sorry kids – maybe next year.
My total damage this year included: $40 worth of Chuck E Cheese tokens, $100 worth of candy: 3lbs of Hersey Kisses, 1lb of M&Ms, 1lb of peanut M&Ms, sour patch kids, 3lbs of gummy bears, gummy worms, sour gummy worms, watermelons, jelly beans, 400 tootsie rolls, Swedish fish, sour bite strips and candy necklaces; bath toys, bubbles, jewelry, sun glasses, pool toys, $200 worth of new clothes, backpacks, bikinis and towels – Not having to get yelled at for messy plastic wrap: priceless. For everything else, there is your sleeping husband’s wallet. J
Most mothers get flowers and hand drawn cards from their kids on Mothers’ Day and a day of relaxation from their husbands – if they’re really lucky. I got something that blows everyone else’s Mothers’ Day gifts out of the water: EIGHT FULL HOURS at Rapids Water Park! Spending an entire day at Rapids is MY idea of relaxation. 
