The Year the Easter Bunny Died

Fear can help to cement every detail of a particular memory into a child's brain.

The memories I have of my fifth Easter are extremely vivid.

The day before Easter, I was bursting with anticipation.  I could recall that the year before had yielded a hefty amount of chocolate and jelly beans and that there were bright colored things and baskets and  a magic rabbit that somehow made all of the other stuff happen.   I was understandably completely out of my mind with excitement.

It wasn't long before my little brain began concocting a scheme to squeeze every last bit of sugary goodness out of the opportunity before me.  

I was going to trap the Easter bunny and make him my slave.   I was going to have an unlimited supply of chocolate forever!

I went to bed that night with the plan firmly in place in my mind:  wake up early.  Go outside and hide in the bushes.  When the Easter bunny appears, trap him in a bag or under a blanket then put him in a hole or in my closet where he can't get away.  It was flawless.  

I fell asleep, content with my strategy.

When I awoke, I was filled with rabid excitement about my almost certain future of unlimited chocolate. 

I grabbed my blanket and raced down the hall:

I threw open the back patio door. 

 

I was shocked to see my poor, tired mother kneeling in the grass, a brightly colored egg in her hand; her head adorned with rabbit ears. 

Imagine that you are five years old.  You have just exploded enthusiastically out of your house, expecting to find the Easter bunny, which you are hoping to trap and keep as your chocolate-making slave.  Instead, you find your mom.  There is no Easter bunny in sight even though he is supposed to be there.  Your mom is wearing rabbit ears.  

What does your brain do with this information?  Mine did this: 

=

My mom killed the Easter bunny and harvested his ears to wear as a hat.   What.  The.  Fuck.   Grief-stricken and terrified, I fled to my room. 

My mom, unaware of the correlation between her rabbit ears and my sudden terror, followed me to offer comfort. 

I can only imagine her confusion.  I'm pretty sure she assumed that I was simply upset over the realization that the Easter bunny wasn't real.  But no.  It took me at least five more years to figure that out.  My mother sat on the bed with me, trying her hardest to convince me that she was just "helping" the Easter bunny because he was "sick."  The whole time I was inching away from her; wondering what other kinds of sickening crimes such a monster was capable of. 

I don't remember how (or even if) the situation was resolved.  I don't remember whether I looked for eggs that year or just sat stunned in a corner of my room all day.  I DO remember worrying about the safety of Santa Clause the next Christmas.  I sat in the hallway closet and watched my stocking, prepared to jump out and surprise any would-be attackers.  No one was going to lay a finger on Santa if I had anything to say about it.  

on the way !

here's a drawing just sitting around on the desktop.
My next post(yes it will include the store) will be fairly large before I take a bit of time focus on cobbling together a new portfolio, and a bunch of other work related things that have been piling up on my desk that I should really tend to before July/August .
c



oh and here's one for an art show at the canteen art shop in Ottawa in may



that's it for now

Random Junk & Shit Ideas 33

Been a looooooooong while. Work's been taking up most of my time, but I have some time off now, so here we go. It'll still be at least a week before the next part, but it's been too long since I've updated. So here's the new page!
CLICK HERE to read it on my LiveJournal.

Apparently I am a Failure at Success

Hi.  I am not coping well with this bit of success I seem to have come across.  It appears that my nervous system is having trouble distinguishing celebratory excitement from extreme danger.

As you can imagine, this has not helped to foster an atmosphere of tranquil creativity.  Every time I sit down to try to write or draw something, I feel like chaos and darkness are going to erupt out of me like some sort of natural disaster laced with PCP and everything I love is going to die.  

Much of this terror may stem from previous experiences with feelings of success. 

The same thing happened when I decided that I wanted to be a psychologist and then a journalist and then a doctor again.    

I want this time to be different.  I want things to work out.  I'm utterly terrified of waking up one morning to find some guy standing over my bed with a flashing neon sign that reads "HAHA.  No one actually likes you!!!  It was all a joke and you fell for it!!!  You idiot!"  

So I've been keeping all my excitement bottled up inside even though I desperately want to tell anyone who will listen about how great my life is right now.  It's partly because I'm superstitious and partly because I believe in at least maintaining the appearance of modesty.  

The combination of feeling like I'm going to die and repressing my happy feelings for fear of looking like an idiot, has made it nearly impossible for me to get my ideas out in a coherent way.  I have a whole binder full of post ideas, but when I try to sit down and actually put them together, it just ends up looking like something created by a schizophrenic baboon with a bear fetish and an endless supply of finger paint; like there's some stupid little guy living in my head and all he wants to write about is bears. 

Anyway, I wanted to let you know what's going on and why I haven't been posting as much.   It will get better.  This has happened before.  Does anybody remember that week where all I posted was a string of Rick Moranis pictures?  And then that somehow turned into a failed side-project called LOLRickMoranis?  That was a shameful time.  However, it seemed to work itself out and everything went back to normal the next week.  Let's all hope that's the case here.   If it isn't, I sincerely hope you enjoy reading about bears as much as I seem to enjoy writing about them.

UPDATE:  Just to clarify, I still want to be famous and win the internet.  It's just that it might take a few days of being a total recluse to get me back to the point where I can write/draw funny things.

UPDATE:  You know what?  Fuck it.