The Easter bunny teaches a very important lesson

Santa Claus has a well established reputation for giving out coal rather than toys to those who have been less than stellarly behaved over the course of the past year. Much is made about how his omniscient surveillance systems are always watching to see if you are being naughty or nice and his extensive lists documenting these observations that he checks twice.

But really, is a little bit of coal in one’s stocking really that bad? I mean, sure, it’s more about what you aren’t getting, but coal as a deterrent isn’t particularly terrible. I guess it’s a little dirty and maybe it’ll smudge something or whatever.

I say all of this because, despite the relatively light punishment of receiving coal, we sure do make a big deal over the whole thing. Meanwhile, the Easter Bunny is out here doing far, far worse and not a single peep, marshmallow or otherwise, about avoiding the rabbit’s ire.

I would take a thousand nuggets of coal over what the Easter Bunny felt was just retribution for all my perceived crimes this past year. I didn’t even know that the anthropomorphized leporid even cared about this type of thing. But, apparently, not delivering an Easter basket or leaving behind compressed pieces of carbon is far too lenient. Instead, the Easter Bunny will destroy your sump pump system, rendering it completely ineffectual, and then cause it to rain all night for good measure.

In Greek mythology, those who have earned the wrath of the gods are given some truly horrible punishments. Tons of mortals were said to be turned into all sorts of things, from cows to spiders to an echo. There was the titan Prometheus who was bound to a rock for all eternity and had an eagle come and eat his regenerating liver every single day. Atlas was condemned to hold up the sky forever, Tantalus was forced to suffer eternal thirst and hunger, you get the picture. Not good stuff.

Well, I think I got a small look into the fate of Sisyphus in the wee hours of Monday morning. Sisyphus was condemned to push a large boulder up a hill for all eternity, with it always rolling back down to the bottom just as he was about to reach the top.

Battling against the water that flooded a quarter of our basement and then threatened to do so again if we stopped bailing water for even a moment felt like a similarly Sisyphean task. The task, to take water bailed out into five gallon buckets up out of the basement and dump them outside, felt neverending, with markers of progress often being hours apart. The time in between those marked successes blurred into a haze of mental and physical exhaustion. Thoughts of the possible futility of this endeavor, of wondering how much longer it would be possible to keep this up, constantly sat on the fringe of the stream of consciousness, pushed aside by the necessity to continue.

Because thankfully, we were not truly joining Sisyphus in his unending task. There was a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel; that if we could just make it to morning, we could exchange a few paltry numbers in our bank account for a magical device that would finally end our strife. The thought of reinforcements in the form of one of humanity’s greatest inventions; a new, nonrusted sump pump, kept me going.

The six hours spent carrying buckets of water up out of our basement feels surreal now. So much of it was spent on autopilot and the fact that I was functioning on an hour of sleep makes it all feel like an extended dream. If it weren’t for Mikaela and my parents, the basement would have surely flooded in its entirety; it took all four of us just to keep up with it at points in the evening.

So, look, Easter Bunny. I’m not really sure what exactly I did, but trust me, it’s not happening again. Message thoroughly received. No need to ever do that again, thanks. Sisyphus? Don’t know how you do it; I lived six hours of your eternal life and I’m not a fan. Mom and Dad? Seriously, the true MVPs here, helping for hours before coming in clutch with a trip to Menards. Thanks to the random Menards employees who graciously open the store at 6 a.m. Don’t know if we could have done it without you.

Alright, I’m going to go to sleep for a week.

A C ERTAIN POINT OF V IEW

BY

NATHANIEL U NDERWOOD REPORTER