Easter Egg Hunting Misadventures

Every year my large family gets together to hunt eggs, eat, and celebrate Easter. This year was no different. However, the egg hunt was rather interesting. My redneck cousin decided to do the egg hiding. Boy did he do a good job! He asked me if I'd like to hunt. Being twenty-four, I told him I'd pass. He then says, "Are you sure? I left clues for some that I hid really well. There is even a canoe trip involved." This I had to see.

He loaded all of us into the back of his pick-up truck and drove us to the bottom of a hill that meets the edge of a pond. All in all, there were three kids, three adults, and two in between. My two aunts and I followed behind watching the kids finding eggs. On the pier, they found a sheet of paper that read, "get in the canoe and go out on a limb." We slowly made our way around the pond to the boat house, stopping along the way to pick up the plastic egg halves my cousin's dog so politely emptied for us. (Apparently dogs like jelly beans too.)

We got the canoe on the water, and my ten year old brother and fifteen year old cousin jumped inside. None of the mothers wanted to risk getting in the water, so I was volunteered to row the boat for them. It was only about 50 degrees outside, and I had a feeling things wouldn't end well. Perhaps it was because they warned us to leave our cell phones on shore?

We pushed off, and as we did, my aunt told my brother not to rock the boat. "You don't want to fall in. There are fish with big teeth in there." I noticed how murky the water was. The pond was only two feet deep, but you couldn't see the bottom. You couldn't see the various logs that littered the pond floor either. My cousin wouldn't tell us where they were, so naturally, we became wedged atop one. I used to oar to push off of it, and the next thing I knew, we were flipping over into the frigid water. My brother starts shrieking, "We gotta get out of the water! We gotta get out of the water!" He's flailing his arms and running to the bank. It was definitely the most entertaining egg hunt I've ever been on. It's also the first time I've ever shown up to the table at a family gathering wearing a night shirt, house coat, and slipper socks.