Aaron offers up a holiday themed story this week, as Easter is used as a backdrop for a darker familial tale on love and loss. As usual, the tale is used as a springboard into a jovial discussion on holidays, imaginary heroes, and family.
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Welcome to Smirk. A podcast that covers society and culture through a storytelling lens. Part creative writing, part discussion, and always interesting. Each week our hosts brings a story to the show, a story they wrote themselves, which is immediately followed by discussion on the author’s moral or theme.
These stories can cover any topic the host wants to discuss, it can be lighthearted or more serious. No one but the author knows if these tales are truth or fiction, and part of the fun is guessing while you’re listening before the reality is made clear.
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Want to read Aaron’s story “A Hatched Plan” in full? Think you can identify the moral or theme for this episode? Read it below, and then take a listen to the podcast.
A Hatched Plan
Today is Easter and it’s been 2 years exactly since Steve lost his dad. No one knows where Dad went, only that he left their home on this very holiday, dressed in a full-length bunny costume, supposedly to hide Stevie’s eggs for the annual hunt. Having squandered most of the family savings on a get rich quick scheme that crashed and burned, authorities speculated numerous theories on what exactly happened to Dad, the most plausible being that he skipped town to avoid his debts.
All Steve knew was that he felt confident he would never see his father again.
Regardless of his sadness, Steve’s Mom refused to let him wallow in self-pity. “Dad will not ruin our holiday!” she yelled as she forced Steve to dress for the annual family Easter egg hunt. It’s been a tradition for years in their family, and Mom was not killing tradition simply because they were abandoned.
Once the cousins arrived, the festivities were to begin. On their 4 acre lot, the 10 of them – ranging from the ages of 10-16, would be scouring the area for hidden eggs. The one who collected the most eggs, would win the contest, be celebrated at Easter brunch, and therefore pick the family movie they would watch later that afternoon.
Steve refused to play the year prior, still upset over losing his father, but he saw how much it crushed his mother. So this year, he was going to play, and he was determined to WIN!
As soon as Grandma gave the word, the kids were on the hunt. Winding in and out of the tree line, looking under rocks and bushes, moving fallen limbs, they took this hunt seriously.
Steve knew the younger kids wouldn’t venture too far into the wooded area, so he skipped the field and headed straight there. In his mind, he could collect every egg there before the young ones even finished looking under every blade of field grass. As he crossed into the woods, shadows loomed and darkness clouded the area, making it increasingly difficult to identify pastel colored plastic eggs in the brush.
One by one, Steve began finding eggs scattered throughout the area. After 30 minutes of collecting, he began to head back when he noticed something. A bit deeper in the woods, maybe 100 yards from where he stood, a white oval shape laid in wait.
Obviously an egg that he missed and his family forgot to color, Steve flew through the trees to grab it. He started hearing the other kids grow closer just as he reached the egg, so he grabbed the egg firm and yanked it up to throw it in his basket.
Only…this wasn’t an egg. It was the tip of a white cloth, an ear. And when Steve pulled on it so hard, he had yanked what was attached partially out of the ground.
A mask of sorts lie halfway buried in the dirt. It was only half visible, but Steve knew exactly what he was looking at. The top half of a bunny costume, and the face within that bunny mask was that of his father. Steve stood locked in place for what seemed like hours, as his mind raced through all of the details of the past two years. The revelations of Dad’s almost costing their family everything, the circumstances of his disappearance, the tragic emptiness his mother wore for several months.
“Ok, time’s up! Come in and count your eggs!”, Steve’s mom yelled from back at the house. Steve snapped out of his trance and headed back, he dumped all of his collected eggs onto the ground. As he walked into the house, he glanced up at his mom sternly, and then lifted his arm and pointed his finger to the woods he just came from. Steve uttered not a single word, and Mom’s mouth dropped, almost hitting the floor in terror.
The rules for this game had just changed, and now Steve was playing for keeps.
Now, listen to the full episode as we dissect Aaron’s story.