This past weekend, I was lucky enough to have the time to go home for Easter. Although it was a quick trip home, it was definitely nice to have the opportunity to see my family again and get away from the stress of midterms and schoolwork. As I’m sure is true of many students, whenever I go home, I always try to jam as much stuff into two days as physically possible, often sacrificing sleep in order to do so. This weekend was no different. On Saturday morning, I found myself practically crawling out of bed at 7:30 A.M. in order to drive across town and help out at my friend’s parent’s daycare’s (did you follow that?) Easter egg hunt.
Now, judging from the nature of my blog and from past posts, I’m sure you can guess that this “never will I ever” item will have something to do with children. And being that this is not the first of my blogs to do so, one might think that I dislike children. So before I continue, I just want to say that that is not true; I do love children. They just have a certain way of making me thankful my parents put up with you and reminding me why I should not have any before the age of 30, that’s all.
ANYWAY, there I was at 8 in the morning on a brisk (and where I’m from, brisk means 28 degrees) Saturday morning, hiding eggs in a field while bright eyed, candy-hungry kids of all ages tried to track my every movement from inside the daycare. The setup of the hunt was rather simple: the older children were let go first, but restricted to an area further from the starting line, where the eggs were more carefully hidden. The younger children were accompanied by their parents to the nearest part of the field, where the eggs were simply laid on the ground. Some eggs contained candy, while others contained “prize” tickets, which allowed the child to claim a large toy from the prize table.
Needless to say, some of these kids were ruthless. Children were yelling at one another. They were stealing each other’s eggs. One child, using the icy ground to his advantage, “accidentally” bumped into the child running beside him and watched his foe fall to the ground. I was horrified. I had been to my fair share of Easter egg hunts as a child, but I did not remember them like this.
As the children came inside to open their eggs and claim their prizes, a whole new issue arose. While some skilled hunters rushed up to the prize table with two or three tickets, other children came back to find that they had no prize tickets at all. Naturally, this led to much crying, a fair amount of tantrums, and even a few incidents of children taking prizes from other children. We did have free ice cream coupons to give those children who did not receive a prize, but this seemed only to generate more tears as children were reminded that they were prize-less.
Needless to say, I will not be opening a daycare anytime soon.
Ahhh, the famed Easter Egg Hunts! I was probably one of those kids who was probably pushed aside and given an ice-cream token for my awfulness in finding plastic eggs. Oh the memories. I honestly commend you for waking up on a Saturday and helping out with the daycare. The sheer (briskness) of the weather would probably be one of the reasons why I wouldn’t step one foot outside my room. In all my experiences, daycare kids are probably the most rowdy bunch of kids I have ever seen. Well, anyway, I hope your mini-break was great aside from this small hiccup! Great story!
I have never participated in an Easter Egg Hunt but I would hope that if I ever did it wouldn’t turn out as this one did. Sometimes I forget how needy small children are and how often they cry about things not being fair. I learned at a very young age that you don’t always get what you want in life and I feel like so many children these days do not learn that lesson until it’s too late. With all the trophies for inclusion and “Good Work” certificates children never seem to learn that you get what you get in life and you should be happy and thankful for what you have received instead of being so greedy. Hopefully after this Easter Egg hunt some of these children learned this lesson, especially when they realized their tears did no good in getting them more prizes.
This sounds like a pretty crazy Easter Egg hunt! I remember when I was younger and would either help out or attend an easter egg hunt, the older kids were always more ruthless than the younger kids. Usually I would be just like them, running everywhere to get as much candy as possible. That is cool that the daycare you were at had prizes too. I think that is great idea, but could causes hysteria for the kids who do not receive a prize! Anyways, I am glad that you got to go home for Easter, and maybe next year you should skip the Easter egg hunt!