The Ladies Auxiliary had an Easter egg hunt and party for the kids this Saturday, and in keeping with the VFW tradition, there was drama. In retrospect, I don't know why we were surprised that there was drama - everything else we've participated in at our VFW and at other posts has been drama-filled; why should an Easter egg hunt be any different? But this time, the blame for the drama goes to the parents of the kids at the party - for once, the Auxiliary and Post members involved are blameless.
The first moment of drama came just minutes after the party officially started. The bags of candy for the kids were already made up and were tied with a ribbon and looked very festive. But someone had brought a grocery bag full of candy the morning of the party, and we thought it was too much trouble to open up 60 bags of candy to put a few more pieces in, so I had the bright idea of taking the extra candy and putting it in some bowls and setting the bowls on the tables. We sat two bowls on about 6 or 8 tables, and thinking most people would sit at those tables so they could access the candy. Wrong. Some of the WT parents there sat at other tables, and started griping because there wasn't any candy on their table. Had they asked me personally about this, I would have told them to move their sorry asses to a table that had the candy, but luckily noone asked for my solution in this matter.
The second moment of drama came once again just minutes after the party started. I was in charge of plating up the hot dogs, chips and cupcakes and handing them out. The lady in charge of the party asked politely for the adults to let the kids get their hot dogs first, to make sure we didn't run out. Well, the WT parents weren't having any part of this. They went through the lines with their kids and asked for a plate for theirselves. After biting my tongue about the candy-on-the-table incident, I was not in the mood for their WT shenanigans, so when the first adult asked for a hot dog I told her she would have to wait until all of the kids were served. She walked off in a huff and grabbed a bowl of the candy from another table and ate that until she got her hot dog.
The last but certainly not least moment of drama came during the egg hunt portion of the party. The eggs were hidden out in the picnic area behind the post parking lot, and specific instructions were given to the parents and their children: kids seven and under would go first, and then the older ones would go. They were also told that the younger ones would hunt the eggs on the left side of the picnic area, and the older ones were to hunt the eggs on the right side. Well, they weren't having any part of that, either. They let the little kids run all over the picnic area, and they snagged about 90% of the eggs. When the older kids had their turn to hunt eggs, there was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth because they didn't have hardly any eggs to hunt. We were afraid the inmates would start a riot. Mom and a couple of the other Auxiliary members sprang into action and collected all of the plastic eggs the younger kids had gathered, and started filling them with some of the leftover candy. Then one of the Auxiliary members came unglued herself - she said that we couldn't just have candy-filled eggs for the older kids to hunt; we would have to put quarters in them just like they had in the eggs that the younger kids hunted. So the Auxliary Treasurer ran and wrote out a check to the canteen and bought some rolls of quarters from them to put in the eggs. Then some of the Post members braved the freezing temperatures and hid the eggs yet again. Let me tell you those older kids made out. There were fewer of them, and they made out like bandits. One boy came up to me and proudly said he had $4.25 in quarters. Maybe I should have hunted for the eggs, too.
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