“@maddenmeiners: As reigning Easter egg hunt champion in Sea Island, Ga (‘86-’87)) I’d like to wish everyone a Happy Easter!”

The other day I tweeted this and although it sounds like a joke, I really did win that Easter egg hunt two years in a row. The first year was actually 1985. When looking through old photos and confirming the details with my Mom, she mentioned I was not yet 3 at the time and could barely complete full sentences let alone thoughts. My memories of that Easter are still faint, but the stories and photos make what happened that vacation even more believable. If you don’t think Easter egg hunts are anything worth talking about, then let me tell you how I won my first championship.

Back in the day before my brother and I started playing organized sports our family would travel south for spring/Easter break. One destination we frequented over the years was Sea Island, GA. I remember being excited for this particular trip not only because our entire family was vacationing there at the same time, but because that year I was finally old enough to participate in the island’s Easter egg hunt.

It was something I Iooked forward to ever since being handed-down my brother’s old "hunting suit” (as I called it then). Although he found the elusive golden egg at my age, he never actually won the event. In order to win the hunt you had to find the most amount of eggs before the allotted time was up. Refusing to live in my brother’s shadow, the early competitiveness within me wanted to find that golden egg and also win the hunt.

I wasn’t quite the youngest of our family then, but I was old enough that my teenage cousins enjoyed taking care of me without having to do much babysitting. They were familiar with the egg hunt from their own experiences and understood how excited I was to finally take part in it. In fact, my oldest cousin Woody- who was 14 at the time, wanted me to win the hunt so much that he and his friend, Conrad, decided to train me.

The training involved mentally and physically preparing me for what I was about to face Easter Sunday. Woody and Conrad hid cassette tapes throughout the halls and living room of our place and timed how long it took me to find them. They even incorporated a “golden cassette” in the mock-hunt to help me stay focussed and driven.

From what I remember, Woody spent much of my training explaining that even though I found a few tapes, the hunt wasn’t over. He must have thought I had a hard time grasping this because the morning of the hunt he went out and did some reconnaissance to find out where the golden egg was hidden. This way, regardless of whether or not I was ready we had this advantage. With my hunting suit on and team cheering from the sidelines nothing was going to stop me from finding that golden egg and winning the thing.

Pictured: Pre-Race Huddle: Woody, myself, and Conrad.

What we didn’t take into consideration was the possibility of another parent finding the golden egg before us and directing their kid to it. This was exactly what happened and just as the race started the golden egg was gone. With eggs and time running out, I was now faced with the reality that I wasn’t the only one in a hunting suit still trying to win. As Woody cheered me on from the sideline I tapped into my training and continued moving.

That’s when I saw it. Inside a hollowed tree trunk where none of the other hunters bothered to check was a silver egg. Nowhere in my training was there any mention of a silver egg, but what happened next no training could have prepared me for anyways. I put the silver egg into my empty bucket but noticed something rattling inside.

Jelly beans! As if there wasn’t enough candy back home waiting for me, my chubby instincts kicked in and I sat down to eat them. Woody and Conrad noticed this, and because they were more prepared for the hunt than I was, stepped into the ring and began to pick up eggs. With each egg they placed in my bucket I began to realize that it wasn’t just the silver egg that had jelly beans- they all did. Had this been known sooner I may have hustled more, but since my older cousin and his friend were doing all the work I casually followed along eating jelly beans.

Pictured: Woody and Conrad leading the way- notice the streamers dividing the gallery from the contestants.

To my surprise and anyone else watching, I won my age group with the most eggs. Granted it was probably unfair that I had the help of two young-adults, but as it turns out many other parents did the same thing. Even if they stripped the title from my chubby little arms it wouldn’t have mattered because if jelly beans were that much of a game-changer in my performance, winning must not have been that important to me after all.

Pictured: Post-race huddle, me thanking Woody.

The event organizers gathered all the winners to have their picture taken with the Easter Bunny. After a few photo-ops I thanked Woody for his efforts and with my entire family watching, went up to accept my award. It was a plush robotic duck that ran on batteries and waddled around, bobbing his head up and down when it was on. This was the first time I had won anything in my life so you can understand why this was so memorable.

We took some more pictures, this time with the duck. I must have still felt the sting of losing out on the golden egg, however, because what happened next my Mom says, “absolutely mortified her.” Just as one of the other mothers was telling her what a nice and expensive French toy that duck was, I took it out of the box and stomped on its neck. My mom described it as if I was trying to kill a bee.

Whether or not I cared about winning, I must have been making a statement by breaking my award because this really wasn’t in my personality to do something like that. I had always been a happy kid and if you look at my face in these pictures you can see that. We even returned the next year and I won again, but that time on my own terms, and there were no extreme acts of expression following that hunt.

Pictured: My brother, the Easter Bunny, and the prized Duck.

This was just a moment in my life where I’ll never fully understand why I reacted the way I did. Maybe I had developed a unique sense of humor early on, or was still coming into myself. Either way I couldn’t talk, and who knows what I was thinking because that same vacation I wandered away from my family on the beach, and even broke into an impromptu break-dance in front an entire country club dinner with people clapping and cheering me on. Those are stories I’ll have to save for another other day, but the next time you see an Easter egg hunt bring a camera. You’ll never know what you see.