The Purdy girls were the last to get on our school bus. The four sisters lived in a two-bedroom house we might call a shanty today. It was neatly kept, but we all knew the family was dirt poor. We could tell by watching the clothes rotate among them that they had to share everything.
Mary Beth Purdy, the youngest, was in my class. I never heard Mary Beth complain . . . not that she ever said much at all . . . and never did I really consider what it would be like to have to share everything in your life. Until, that is, our third-grade year when the teacher wheeled in the TV/VCR cart for a treat; not an educational film, an animated one.
I was riveted as Peter Rabbit and his sisters—Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail— embarked on a treasure hunt for a huge chocolate egg. The four sibling bunnies agreed to separate and search for the egg, increasing the chances they would find it before the other searchers. If one of them found it, Peter instructed they should bring it back to share with the others.
Flopsy, it turned out, was the lucky bunny who found the egg. As Flopsy, eyes aglow, pulled the shiny brown egg into her little furry paws, Mary Beth Purdy stood up in the back of the room and yelled, “RUN, FLOPSY, RUN!”
Why am I telling you this? Because when a friend told me this story, I laughed until I cried! If she’d hit the end a few seconds earlier, I would have spewed sweet tea all over the table, too. No moral of the story or thoughtful insight today. Just hopping I made you smile. Hopping. See what I did there?
