Easter Bunny

Seeing a number of people in large mascot costumes today, I was reminded of the time I was the Easter Bunny in a mall. I was 14 or 15, I can't remember, but I was talked into it. I think I made $4.50 an hour. This was good at the time for me, the non-paper route job I had before that was the A/V person for the school district Evening program. They paid me $2 an hour to push around TVs and make copies.

Anyway, this easter bunny costume was like 120 degrees inside it. It had mesh in the mouth for me to see through, but the head did not have any openings for a straw to fit through. I spent the entire time sweating out every ounce of liquid in my body.

Sometimes, lots of people would be there to get pictures taken with the Easter Bunny. I was at one of those booth things they do for Santa, but there were no elves and no candy for the people. Purely a money making, get 'em on the spur of the moment type outfit. This wasn't the best fun, between the scared kids screaming all the time, and the need to get out of there to get something to drink. (We would take a walk every hour to go to the back room so I could drick as much water as possible before going back out.)

One time, two fully grown women decided they needed to sit in the Easter Bunnies lap to get their picture taken. This was after at least an hour of sweating, I'm sure they would have thought twice had they known there was a waterlogged teenage kid under the suit.

The heaviest piece of that costume was the head. My eyes were level with the mouth, the rest of the head went even higher. (Making me look like a grownup in there, I guess) With the head and the ears, that thing was heavy. You had to make sure you didn't look up or down too much, the movement was magnified on the big head, and there was the risk of the thing coming off.

I have no ending statement.