Throw-Back-Monday: I Ruined Easter

Easter is fast approaching. It’s that time of year where retail stores spew forth obnoxious pastels and hordes of chocolate bunnies. They encourage traditions like gift giving in baskets filled with fake elastic grass and dyeing hard boiled breakfast nosh in an array of colors for decor. It has become the holiday where retail kings have made plastic egg hunting the order of the day.

Cheesy baskets and chocolate bunnies.

Every Easter Sunday my parents, too, would hold one of these hunts (well into our adult years, I might add). The hunt was always one of the highlights of my year. Each of us had a particular color and each egg was filled with candy, quarters, pennies, nickels or dimes. And my mother would use her old giant white pantyhose eggs as a special prize. Those eggs contained a handwritten clue. The clue would lead us to a king size candy bar hidden somewhere in the house. So there was only one white egg each, and that was first come first serve. As we got older, I think the hunts were actually more fun as my parents began forgetting where they hid the eggs or as the deviants my siblings and I are, we would begin stealing another’s egg and re-hiding it.

Egg hunt!

Typically, we would stay inside while my folks would go outside and hide the eggs around our property. Of course occasionally there was some rain which would bring the hunt indoors. This was one of those occasions.

So my parents could hide the eggs inside without us spying on them, we were relegated to the basement while we anxiously awaited our hunt. I don’t remember our ages, but my brother and oldest sister weren’t participating. It was just my older sister, younger sister and me left to our own devices in the dank cold underbelly of our home.

My little sister was off doing little sister things I suppose. Talking to herself? Playing with imaginary friends? Essentially, she was occupied. My older sister was sitting in a chair reading a book. She was studious like that.

And me? I was playing darts with the super sharp steel-tipped darts with which I was forbidden to play (they just stuck to the board so much better than the plastic ones). So I set up the board, which I wasn’t supposed to do, and began practicing my swing throw.

Practicing my throws.

I wasn’t doing so hot, but keep in mind I was a kid. My abilities then were nothing like the mad pub-style dart skills I possess today. Adding to my pathetic attempt to improve is the fact that I’m mixed handed. So I was throwing with my left and right hands to figure out which would be the right fit. I consider myself left handed typically – I play tennis left handed, I write left handed, I throw a ball left handed, but I bowl right handed, I golf right handed, I use right handed scissors … now it was time to figure out if I was going to be a southpaw pro or a righty.

Not. A. Righty.

As I threw one of the darts with my right hand towards the board, I hooked it. I hooked it pretty badly. I watched in slow motion as the dart went nowhere near the board and sailed straight towards my older sister still sitting reading her book. It landed right in the middle of her arm.

My sister was a sitting duck.

Was there time to yell a warning? Meh, I don’t know. I think I just watched with morbid curiosity as it punctured her skin.

She was always the dramatic one.

If you think about it, she shouldn’t have been sitting in my eye line anyway. I was playing with rusty tipped skin-piercing darts for crying out loud, and I couldn’t hit my mark to save my soul. She should have moved.

Then the fear kicked in. Sad to say, not the fear that I just shot my sister with a dart and any number of horrible things could result from such an injury, but the fear that my mother and father were going to find out. I was screwed. And I ruined Easter.

I think my sister was taken to the hospital and received a tetanus shot. She wasn’t too happy with me, but she was totally fine. Most people would chalk this up to a total-take-back but not me. If it were not for this incident of extremely inept proportions, perhaps I wouldn’t have been encouraged to acquire better aim. I may not be a dart-throwing pro, but I can certainly hit the board now, and with concentrated effort – a ring.

So what’s your best Easter story? Email me or share it in the comments section below.