Their mom let them drive to the Easter Egg hunt.
It was just down the street. She would walk alongside the little motorized car, which wasn’t very fast. They would stay on the sidewalk, wave at friends and neighbors. It was a beautiful day, sun shining, flowers blooming, blue sky, eggs hidden in plain sight earlier that morning.
All headed to the Big Event.
What could go wrong?
As if she herself were looking for eggs, the mom scrambled about here and there in the garage searching for the long-range parent remote control with emergency brake. She couldn’t find it. They were going to be late.
At a top speed (of three speeds) 2.8mph, their little red sports car could no way get away from her. Hadn’t she timed her own hikes the past summer reaching speeds of 3mph? And that had been with a full pack! She could certainly keep up with them.
Except she couldn’t.
While engaged in conversation with a neighbor who, with her own children, was likewise late and hurrying and approaching the Big Event, her little red sports car enthusiasts were no longer on the sidewalk.
Nor were they on the street.
Thinking it would have been a fun outing to learn road safety, stop signs and what they meant, turn signals, seat belts and the like, all while improving their motor skills, mom forgot all of what had constituted Plan A as she watched the scene unfolding before her horror-stricken eyes.
The Big Event had begun.
The mom caught a fleeting glance of her daughter who, with a Chesire Cat smile, was – in her new found freedom – cranking the steering wheel first left and then right, the little red sports car careening here and then there among the startled little ones tottering about in their pretty pastels, patterns and prints, seeking prized possessions to place in their cute little baskets, the bigger kids giving way to their smaller siblings.
But not the two in the little red sports car.
His hands clasped either in prayer for safety, or delight in the journey (probably the latter given his impish smile), her brother ignored the cries of appeal from mom, probably because the little red sports car featured an MP3 player, the volume cranked to where the sounds of Loretta Lynn’s hot country single “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man)” was being heard by every egg hunter, by all their parents, and by the organizers throughout the Big Event.
They didn’t find any eggs. They did drive over a few.
And of all the adventures these two have had together as older sister and little brother – scratches and bruises from imaginary battles fought against dragons; games of capture the flag; Hansel-and-Gretel type adventures in which they escape yet again – the day they drove to the Big Event is a mom-memory that still brings a smile.
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