Most kids have them. Mine was Bert, Tim’s was Ernie, Meghan’s favorite childhood toy was a faded yellow Easter rabbit that she aptly named Bunny. It traveled everywhere with her and if you knew Meghan as a toddler you also had the pleasure of knowing Bunny.
As the children of our church’s youth leaders, the trio of Atkinson toddlers got to join a weekend-long adventure to a location that now escapes my memory. But while the destination eludes me, what happened on the ride home is something I’ll never forget.
A dozen years her senior, it didn’t take long for some of the weekend’s attendees to playfully tease Meghan about her fondness of the stuffed rabbit. On the ride home from the weekend, it seems that Meghan had unknowingly permitted Bunny to get packed into a suitcase which was being transported in the minivan that my Dad was driving. At a stop for gas, Meghan made her Bunny-less displeasure known, but as the van was crammed with teenagers, sleeping bags, pillows and suitcases, there was no way to get Bunny back until we arrived home.
So riding in a car with Mom, we followed the van back onto highway 401.
Not long after we got up to speed, we noticed that the teens in the van were holding up a pad of yellow legal paper with black letters up to the back window. We inched closer for a read.
Legal Pad: WE…. HAVE…. BUNNY…
Meghan: (wide-eyed) Noooooooo!
Legal Pad: WE…. WILL…. THROW…. HER… BACK
Meghan: Yeah! No, wait, Nooooooo! (crying)
Tim and I are laughing.
And then it happened. A crumpled, pale yellow ball went flying out the van’s window. In a blur, it blew past us on the gravel shoulder of that busy highway.
Meghan: (whaling) NOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooo!
It’s uncanny how much a piece of balled up legal paper resembles a faded, yellow Easter bunny when it flies by at 60 miles an hour.
2 Comments
No one drives 60mph on the 401. They drive 130kph. Much faster-sounding.
That’s just plain cruel. Odds are, Meghan… those teenagers are doing time in some Canadian prison about now. Yes?