Bunfight

What would the holidays be without some kind of fight? I don’t know if there was something in the air this Easter but I witnessed a few fights. As well as a non-fight.

Let’s start with the non fight. My parents and sister gave me the cold shoulder over Easter. Wouldn’t return my calls. Didn’t acknowledge their grandson or nephew at all. This is the first time in over 40 years that I have spent Easter without them and it was hard. But I see how it’s going to be now and I guess I have to accept it. It’s the new Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel entitled Life In The Time Of The Non Fight. A non fight has many elements of a fight – the tension, the opposing views, that never the twain shall meet attitude; but it never materialises into anything where there is shouting or slamming doors or even stamping of feet because the parties involved never actually get into the same room together. So it remains a non fight.

Non fights aside I witnessed two other legitimate fights. Both Easter food related, interestingly enough.

FIGHT 1:

My friend Morgan is divorced and has custody of the kids. She is currently involved in a court case because her husband hasn’t been paying enough child support. I hate the whole child support issue; it can get really heated and out of control very quickly. Morgan is mad at the moment. I don’t blame her. Her ex earns in excess of 200,000 dollars per year and only pays her 600 dollars per month for the kids. She is finding it hard to make ends meet, paying Sydney rent and child care costs all on her own.

On Easter Saturday her ex dropped over with a pack of Easter eggs for the kids. A pack she had seen in the supermarket for three dollars. The kids had been over to their Dad’s place the day before and had come home waxing lyrical about this enormous Lindt Easter Bunny he had bought for his new girlfriend. Four foot tall, apparently. Morgan looked up the bunny on the web and it cost 350 dollars. For a chocolate bunny? She was angry her ex only spent three dollars on his own children and a hundred times that on his Joanie Come Lately girlfriend.

I was driving past Morgan’s place on Saturday afternoon and she flagged me down from the front lawn, asking me to drive her to her ex’s house. I don’t know how she got a key to the front door but she had one. Worried, I followed her inside.

There it was on the dining table in all its chocolate sumptuousness. I felt myself shaking a little bit with happiness that such a thing of splendour could exist. I was so entranced I actually thought the four foot tall chocolate bunny had an aura around it. A chocolate aura.

Morgan pulled something out of her bag. Turned out to be a hammer. She had a glint in her eye that reminded me of Glenn Close in Fatal Atttraction, but instead of boiling this bunny she was going to smash it up with a hammer. I felt something come over me, a connection with the divine. All at once I became the self-appointed protector of the Glorious Bunny and all its resplendent chocolate-ey goodness.

‘I won’t let you do it,’ I cried, standing in front of the bunny with my arms outstretched. ‘You can’t hurt the bunny.’

As Morgan raised the hammer and my eyes grew wide I heard a car pull up. It was Morgan’s ex. He roared. Morgan shouted. Fireworks ensued. Words that rhymed with duck were exchanged. But the bunny, the Beauteous Bunny, was saved.

FIGHT 2:

In the supermarket this morning there was a sale on hot cross buns.

Buy two packs of six, get one free. For four dollars.

Now if you enjoy a hot cross bun that is a very good deal. 18 buns for four dollars.  That’s 22 cents each.

Once the red hot special was announced the bakery section of the supermarket went crazy. People were diving over one another to get the packs of buns. Grunting, groaning and whooping. Holding the packs of buns aloft like an Olympic trophy. I had no idea hot cross buns were so popular.

Very quickly the shelves grew empty. One pack remained. Two women with two packs each faced off for the final pack. I was sure the shorter, more agile-looking woman would get the final pack, but it was the more solid, taller woman who did so.

The shorter woman wasn’t having it, grabbing the final pack out of the taller woman’s grasp. An actual physical fight ensued with shoving and hair pulling. The store manager had to get involved, getting between the two women. He was white-faced and dishevelled by the end of it, his name tag falling on the floor and stomped upon. It was a real bunfight.

Magically, another pack of hot cross buns appeared, appeasing the fighting women. I couldn’t believe it as they marched to the checkout without a word of thanks to the manager. I would have thrown them both out of the store.

Bunnies, buns and taciturnity. It’s been quite an Easter.