The Bunny Man Chronicles

5:53 PM:  It is cold and foggy.  There is a soaking rain falling, and the air smells oddly of sulphur, brimstone, diapers, and pepperoni.  I pull into the crowded parking lot and look for an open space.  Incredibly, I spot one right near the door, and I take it.  It's perfect.  I stay in my vehicle with the motor running.  I am in no hurry to go in.

A tan SUV has followed me into the lot, but because I have taken the last good spot, it is forced to move on, finally settling on a space at the far end of the lot.  Through the downpour, I feel hate oozing from the dark interior of the SUV, hate that is directed at me.

I watch as a woman gets out of the vehicle and opens her rear lift gate.  I expect children to spill out, but instead the woman reaches in and pulls out several large and obviously heavy plastic tubs and stainless steel trays.  Clearly she is bringing provisions for the event and is late.  As she lurches by my car she "accidentally" whacks my rear view mirror with her containers.  I ignore this aggression and stay calm.  I realize she is struggling and I wonder if I should offer to help her.  I wonder if this would help her hate me less.  I wonder if this would mollify her.  I wonder all of this stuff five more times as she returns to her vehicle to unload a total of six cumbersome loads of provisions through the torrential, and now icy, downpour…all by herself.

"Life can be brutal."  I think to myself. 

I turn up my heater.

6:10 P.M.  Wife arrives.  Never a slave to convention, she wastes no time and parks directly in the fire lane.  She is banking that fire lanes are irrelevant as nothing is likely to catch fire in this much rain

My kids exit the car.  They are clad in pajamas and looking happy.  My wife is not looking happy.  My wife has realized that this event is in direct conflict with her Friday evening cocktail hour.  She grunts a guttural "hello" in my direction.  I do not get a kiss. 

All thoughts of a parking lot quickie are abandoned.

I help gather sleeping bags and assorted kid debris and we go in.  For the first time in twenty years, I make a sign of the cross.

6:15 P.M.  We penetrate the building and aim for the horrifying din that continues to grow in volume as we descend down corridors and stairs.  As we head in, mice and insects are running past us, heading out.  A uniformed cop walks by us crying.  This is going to be worse than expected.

We pass a bulletin board.  I notice a schedule posting of weekly AA meetings.  For their sake, I pray that nobody who is trying to quit drinking wanders in here tonight.

6:28P.M.  We have arrived into a scene of almost indescribable chaos.  The effect is like watching the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan…on acid.  The hall is a stupefying blur of activity, noise, and flying objects.   Throughout the room, children and adults, as well as several inanimate objects, are weeping.

The floor of the room is covered with sleeping bags and pillows and what looks like human brain matter.  In the front of the room there is a small stage with a movie screen that may have been originally owned by Thomas Edison.  Children are running on the stage, screaming.  Adults are screaming at the screaming children to stop screaming and get off the stage.  Occasionally a child loses balance and falls off.  The impact sound is like a 30lb bag of rice hitting a supermarket floor in the middle of a looting.  The bodies are quickly dragged away as floor space is becoming too valuable to waste on medical emergencies. 

In the center of the room a cart is positioned that holds a video projector.  It is surrounded by a half dozen well meaning but clearly dysfunctional looking adults, one of whom is a fully grown man wearing bunny pajamas.  I shudder.  None of this group appears to have any idea how to coax the projection device into actually projecting images.  They are each taking turns slapping it.  As I pass by I hear the bunny pajama guy is talking about the need for discipline.  I wonder if the bunny pajama guy is required to let the police know where he lives.

In the rear of the hall there is long table covered with pizza boxes, soda, tears, and bowls of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish.  Children and adults are hovering and ripping pizzas apart with their bare hands.  The sound of open mouth eating cuts through the din.  The combined images remind me of something I have seen before but can't immediately recall.  Then I do:  It is the flesh-eating ghouls from Night of the Living Dead.

Around me, preschoolers are stuffing Goldfish and random pieces of mozzarella into every available orifice.  The distribution of food is appalling and there are sure to be extraordinary amounts of waste.  I glance out a window and notice that several hundred sea gulls are circling the building.  I also notice that a tan SUV is fully engulfed in flames at the far end of the parking lot.  Firefighters are trying to respond but for some reason are having difficulty getting their apparatus to the scene.

I turn to my wife just as she is slipping something back into her purse.  It looked like a flask.  She looks at me blankly, then winks.  "Smart gal" I think to myself.  I ask her what movie is to be shown.  Toy Story, she answers, shaking her head sadly.  I mull her mood.  I mull the wisdom of the choice.  Toy Story…toys, animation, Disney…it seems sensible enough.  

I am mullified.

Still…anxiety lingers.

6:35 P.M.  Somebody official tries to speak above the noise to make an announcement.  She fails.  She might as well have been a stroke victim/mime addressing a room full of blind mutes. 

Then suddenly, the movie starts. 

Then it stops. 

The result is commotion, furtive movement, angry gestures, a guy in bunny pajamas having seizures, copious amounts of slapping, and then, mercifully, the movie starts again.  Children seem engaged.  Within minutes, however, all hope is lost.  The roots of my earlier anxiety make themselves clear.

Toy Story is a terrible choice.  It is mostly dialogue.  It has a complicated plot.  The jokes are too clever and the storyline is too deep.  There is an evil character (Sid) that is way too creepy, even for emotionally secure adults, never mind preschoolers.  There is no way this movie was chosen by anybody who is actually raising preschool age children.  It is a movie for an audience no younger than 10.  The average age of this audience is 5.  Toy Story is for people who are not up past their bedtime.  We need Dora.  We need Care Bears.  We have neither.  We are doomed. 

My wife, and her purse, head for the ladies room.

7:35 P.M.  An hour has passed but my sensory system has apparently shut down, as I cannot retrieve a single memory from it.  The carnage continues.  The floor is a carpet of pizza crust and Goldfish crumbs.

Scanning the crowd I see that my children have positioned themselves in the middle of the room and, incredibly, seem to be watching the movie.  They have not moved for sixty-five minutes.  From where I sit I cannot discern if they are actually watching the movie or are simply frozen with terror.  I send my wife in for reconnaissance.  She returns and reports that they are refusing to make eye contact but otherwise seem conscious and alert.  She also reports that they've spilled a two full cups of lemonade onto someone else's sleeping bag.  I pause to pity the innocent who will be unjustly charged with incontinence, but only for a moment.  In the battle zone of childhood development there will always be collateral damage.

7:38 P.M.  Time has slowed to a crawl, an agonizing…snail like…crawl. 

When will this horror end?

7:40 P.M   Despair has filled the room.  There is no avoiding the beast.  Toy Story has become merely a cruel background mush of colors and noise.  Bunny Man lies in the corner sucking his thumb.  Partially digested food items and the occasional juice box projectile fly through the air as missiles.  Parents, desperate to escape, are fabricating emergency phone calls from non-existent babysitters.   Healthy adults are claiming chest pains.  One woman claims to be going into labor.  She is at least 70 years old. 

7:50 P.M.  The crowd has morphed into an ugly lawless mob.  Rampaging preschoolers have begun roaming the floor, and rival gangs have begun staking out their turf.  I look at my wife.  "Don't make direct eye-contact," she warns, "…unless you wanna get shanked."  I lower my head and stare at the floor.  I thank God I am not wearing pajamas.

7:55 P.M.  Tribal factions now control different parts of the room.  Some sort of altar is being constructed in the middle of the floor and it appears that there is going to be a human sacrifice.  "Bye-bye Bunny Man" I think to myself, "we hardly knew ye." 

I look out the window praying to see something reassuring.  Perhaps some sort of S.W.A.T. hostage negotiation urban assault team or a nuclear mushroom cloud.  Instead, staring back at me, I see a thousand hungry seagulls.  God is dead.

7:59 P.M.  God is not dead.  Perhaps he is just cruel.  I spot a glimmer of hope, a faint memory from a distant life.  On the screen I see flickering images that I recognize is the final scene of the movie.  Credits begin to roll.  People run for the door.

8:00 P.M.  The room is almost empty now, except for several stragglers and what might be a dead body.  The parking lot woman is beginning to collect and stack her trays.  She seems bitter and unaware that her vehicle is now just a burned out hulk.  I offer no help.  Bunny Man does.  It's a match made in heaven.

My family and I clutch each other in a group hug and shuffle out the door.

8:15 P.M.  We are driving home.  We are weary from our family fun-time movie event.  I imagine this is what British people feel like driving home after an English soccer riot.

By the time we get home the kids are asleep in their car seats.  We mull the idea of leaving them strapped in overnight, but because of the sub-zero temperature, and an open DYS investigation, we eventually change our minds.