Easter “Surprise”
I like to pick up trash too!
We took SFBaby to one of these events in an upscale part of town. This hunt was run by the local business association and it was very well organized. We even invited our Jewish friends with the twintastic babies to join us. (We figured that if heathens like us were allowed to participate in a Christian rite, then Jews should be able to come too.)
For the 0-2 age group, the organizers had roped off a big area of lawn and tossed a bunch of plastic Easter eggs onto it. Once your kid toddles around and “finds” three eggs, you can then turn the eggs in and exchange them for real candy. (They were a little uptight about the three-egg limit though, and they even had monitors checking the contents of bags to make sure that your toddler did not exceed his/her quota…!)
There was also an easter egg hunt in our favorite playground in our part of town. We are big fans of this particular playground for a variety of reasons, but one feature is that it has a great sand pit for the kids to play in. Anyway, we didn’t have a chance to attend the Easter egg hunt there, but according to the flyers, it was sponsored by the local police station.
Unfortunately, the after-effects of the “organization” of this hunt were painfully obvious. When we arrived at the playground the following Monday morning, we noticed that a whole bunch of pigeons were rooting around in the sand and that the playground was stuffed with trash—and it was sticky, melted, chocolate-y trash.
It would seem that someone had the bright idea to take a bunch of Easter candy, bury it in the sand, and then asked the kids to go find it. Although this was surely a fun time for the kids since they got to dig for buried treasure, the impact on the playground was significant. (For next year, maybe the cops can take a hint from the well-run egg hunt and only bury empty plastic eggs!)
I spent most of our playtime that day trying to prevent SFBaby from running off with heaps of garbage, but I figured that even if the fuzz wasn’t able to get it clean, the city’s park department would surely clean it up soon.
On Tuesday, we showed up at the playground again…and encountered the same amount of trash. I happened to see a park employee walking around, so I asked him if they ever cleaned out the sand pit. He indicated that they did, but that they could only clean up the stuff that was on the surface. Fine, so maybe it’ll be clean by tomorrow, right?
The next day, we showed up…and sure enough, there was still a lot of trash (including some of the same trash that I saw the previous day). Clearly, San Francisco “Wreck” & Park was not going to be doing anything about it any time soon. Chasing after SFBaby while she was trying to eat garbage was no fun, so it was obviously time to take matters into my own hands.
That afternoon, SFBaby and I showed up again armed with our garbage-grabber. (On our home street, we get a lot of trash strewn near our driveway, so our building has a communal garbage-grabber that we use for removing litter.)
I estimate that I spent a good 45 minutes walking around the playground cleaning up the surface trash and stuffing it into a bag (while simultaneously trying to prevent SFBaby from getting into trouble). Most of the questions I got, from kids and adults alike, were generally of the “do you work here?” variety. Some of the other parents recognized me from past visits, so at least they were appreciative. This still felt like one of those “above-and-beyond” things, but when we came back the next day, the pigeons had left and the playground was mostly clean!
Tags: easter, egg, garbage, hunt, jewish, police, rec and park, rubbish, San Francisco, sfpd, trash, twintastic
LOL! It’s kind of like when you have to use a public restroom at a gas station and you ask the clerk for cleaning supplies to tidy up the commode, just so you can go to the bathroom.
Exactly! Although I admit that I’ve never done that…but I suppose that it’s easier for men in that regard.