An Unforgettable Easter

There were less than ten people at our house that day including myself, and it's a guarantee that not one of us has forgotten that Easter.

It all started with our guests' arrival (let's call them Woody and Gloria for this retelling). My kids were excited to see their car pull up in the driveway, as they'd been waiting anxiously by the backdoor to welcome them.

We have a long sidewalk leading to the rear of the house, so it was fairly obvious when Woody quickly exited the car and started walking awkwardly to the house that something wasn't quite right. About halfway down, he suddenly reached around and clutched his rear end, and proceeded to sort of tiptoe the rest of the way.

As he entered the house, he muttered, "I might not make this one."

Now the entrance to our basement is right inside the back door, and he'd been there before so he knew this. He headed straight down the stairs, banging the door behind him. Gloria came in shortly after, and we exchanged greetings and hugs.

The two had brought gifts along and the kids were enjoying opening them and getting their candy treats. We hadn't migrated far into the house as we were waiting for Woody to return, but after about 15 minutes, he still hadn't come back up.

The moments started to stretch as we heard no sign of him and Gloria looked increasingly uncomfortable. An awkward silence descended. It was about that time when we noticed the smell.

It was distinct and very potent.

At this point, we were all fairly certain about what was happening downstairs, but nobody wanted to say it out loud.

After about a full half hour, Woody finally emerged. He took one look at all our gathered faces, knowing we knew what was going on, and with a completely unrepentant face said, "Sorry to ruin your Easter."

It was hysterical. It was such a deadpan delivery to a situation that was extremely embarrassing.

To make matters worse, he was holding a trash bag with what we could only assume were his underwear as he'd worn the same jeans back up. Now, if you know Woody at all, you know that he has a difficult, some would say impossible time parting with anything.

So it was not surprising when an argument then ensued about what to do with the soiled garments. The two had somewhere else to go after their visit with us, and Gloria was in no way tolerant of taking the sack of crappy clothes along and have them stinking up the car.

In order to keep the peace, I found a recent bag of my husband's clothing that he'd never really liked but didn't return, which happened to include some brand new underwear.

I quickly grabbed them as the argument escalated, and presented them to Woody right after he dramatically exclaimed, "Look I'm throwing them out!" while holding the bag over our outside trash bin, throwing them in and then slamming the lid shut.

Thankfully he was overjoyed at the new underwear and quickly went to change them.

We were able to joke around a little after the tension broke, and he admitted to having eaten too many tacos at a local restaurant. No kidding!!

What we found out later was the the toilet downstairs looked like a diarrhea bomb had gone off. It appeared that he really didn't 'make it' at all. My poor husband ended up cleaning up the rest of the mess.

I'm still not sure what he did down there for 30 minutes, but it was not cleaning up the toilet area even though there was a large slop sink and plenty of paper towels.

Oh well. It's a story that my family has never forgotten even though it's been many years since it happened. This was the first thing they all thought of when I told them about the challenge.

Every once in awhile, one of us will say, "Sorry to ruin your Easter," if they do something obviously messed up. It never fails to make us laugh until we cry.