In March of this year, my sister-in-law, Melissa, turned 50. We celebrated with a 70’s party, including a piñata.
Now let me just say… I’m not a fan of piñatas. There are many reasons for this, but one of them is that, in addition to masses of candy, my kids always want to bring home the piñata carcass. Many a piñata carcass has passed my threshold, and far too many tears have been shed after the piñata remnants disappear.
When my daughter asked if she could bring the empty piñata home, I told her no. I said that Amber (my other sister-in-law and host of Melissa’s birthday party) needed to keep the piñata at her house so she could use it again. But Amber doesn’t honor any of my parenting requests, so when we went to leave, my kids had a piñata in hand. I told them I had a great idea! We were going to hide the piñata at Amber’s house and see how long it would take her to find it! What fun! It’s like a game!
So I took the piñata and placed it atop Amber’s kitchen cabinets with her Easter decorations and went on my merry way.
Two weeks later we went to California with Amber and her husband, Tim. Shortly after we arrived, I opened the shower curtain in our bathroom to find… the piñata.
So not only had Amber kept the darn thing, she’d driven it across two states to leave it in our shower!
We did what anyone else would do… left it on the windshield of her car the morning we vacated the condo. Serves her right for sleeping later than us.
A few days later a package arrived on our porch from a "Pinn Yada." Before I even opened it, I texted Scotty.
And true to my word, I drove straight to Amber’s house and threw it on her porch. I thought she saw me on her security camera, by she didn’t discover the package until 3:00 the next morning. I woke up at the more reasonable hour of 5:00 a.m. to a slew of text messages from her.
During the summer, Amber offered to take my kids to a carnival. She took my van so she could fit everyone, and the piñata came back in my trunk.
When Tim and Amber went on a trip to see Tim's son on the other side of the country, I lovingly decorated their porch so they could watch me on camera and do nothing about it. Sure enough, they sat in the airport sending me threatening texts, and I just looked at the camera and shrugged.
Amber's porch sign says, "Go away!" so I made the extra effort to make it "be nice." Amber also thinks she hates board games (but she secretly loves them).
We went on a trip with Tim and Amber in September, and she brought the "Welcome" sign I'd left on her porch and hung it on the front door of the house we stayed at.
At the end of that trip, we had to have Tim and Amber bring Scotty’s golf clubs home for him because we didn’t have room in our van. I went to pick up the golf clubs from them one night, and the piñata had been rolled up teeny and stuffed inside the golf bag. I didn’t think they would desecrate the piñata like that! I'd carried the dang thing out of their house and brought it home!
We left the piñata in our garage for a while after that as we schemed. One day Amber had to get in our garage while we weren’t home, and when I came home later and realized I’d left the piñata sitting out where she could see it, I texted her right away and said, “I can’t believe you didn’t steal the piñata!” I mean… think of how that could have played out! US - thinking we had the piñata safely in our possession. THEM - pulling off a theft and giving it to us for Christmas or something!!
Alas, we decided that WE would give the piñata to THEM for Christmas… in its final form. But first we had to mess with them a bit.
Tim and Amber have been paranoid all year about the ways we would pass the piñata to them. Enough so that they have meticulously checked their window wells and parked off site during family events. They also have a housekeeper that they’ve instructed to search for the piñata every week.
To stir their paranoia, we let them go out of town twice with no piñata movement. But when they came back the second time, I had Scotty text Tim and ask him if they’d found anything interesting when they came home, hoping that would make Tim nervous.
Then a few days later, I manipulated some of my in-laws. I texted my mother-in-law, my sister-in-law Meghan, and Amber’s daughter and asked them if Amber had said anything to them about finding the piñata. My goal: to get them to start subtlety asking Amber questions about the piñata to make her paranoid… knowing full-well that the piñata was at my house the whole time. They asked me where I’d hidden the piñata, and I told them I wasn’t going to tell them yet because I didn’t want them to be tempted to give Amber any hints.
(When they read this, they're never going to trust me again. Worth it).
Meanwhile, I’d made the piñata into two commemorative Christmas ornaments - one for us, and one for Tim and Amber - as to lay it to rest. Ours was on our tree all season, while Tim and Amber’s waited for Christmas to draw closer.
A few days before Christmas, Amber invited us over for dinner. It couldn’t have been planned more perfectly! I wore a hoodie and kept the ornament in my front pocket until I had a moment to sneak it on to the tree. Then voila! The deed was done.
It took them four days, but they finally found it!
And with that, we have called an end of year truce to our pinata feud. Fare thee well, old friend.
Pinn Yada's final moments.
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