The Easter Bunny Wore a Straitjacket

When I was a little girl, freedom came with a banana seat and faded handlebar streamers. My bike wasn’t just a toy. It was my compass, my escape hatch, my everything. I rode it everywhere, untethered and unseen, under the sacred law of childhood in the '60s: go play in traffic, and be home when the streetlights come on. That wasn’t a joke. That was my mother’s idea of structure.

I knew every crack in the sidewalk, every shortcut through the alley, every dog that barked too loud, and every neighbor who didn’t. The world felt big but safe, like a sandbox with invisible walls. That illusion shattered one night at dusk.

I was coming home the usual way, coasting down the alley behind our house, tires humming over worn concrete. The sun had dipped just low enough to stain the sky purple. I pedaled up to the porch behind our house, which connected to the garage and felt like a separate world. It was nothing fancy: just a small, enclosed space with a screen door that never quite latched right and the dusty smell of summer grass and old wood. But to me, it was a hideout. It felt like a safe haven. It was a peaceful interlude where I could secure my bike, remove the sweat from my face, and feel secure.

I spent hours on that porch — curled up with Nancy Drew mysteries, tracing the patterns of sunlight as it filtered through the slats, listening to the low drone of a neighbor’s lawnmower and the soft clink of ice in my mother’s glass as her voice floated through the open kitchen window. That porch was mine. Steady. Still. Sacred. A narrow strip of peace suspended between two kinds of chaos — the noise of the world outside and the quieter, sharper storm waiting inside.

Inside, moods shifted like weather. My father’s temper could flip the room in an instant, sending a dinner plate spinning across the table like a warning. You never knew who you’d meet when you stepped through that back door.

But one night, I wasn't surprised by what was waiting inside.

It's what was already there.

I opened the screen door, rolled my bike inside, and something jumped.

Not shuffled. Not crept. Jumped.

Straight up. Right at me.

At first, I thought it was a dog. My brain tried to make sense of it, to find a shape it recognized. But then it rose up, fast and jerky, like something spring-loaded. White. Human-shaped. But wrong.

To a little girl, it looked like the Easter Bunny.

That’s what I told myself. That’s what I needed to believe.

I dropped my bike with a crash and ran inside, heart hammering, breath caught somewhere between my ribs and my throat. “The Easter Bunny’s on the porch!” I shouted, wide-eyed and wild, sure of what I’d seen and not at all sure of what it meant.

My mother, a few beers into the evening, didn’t even look up. “Shut up, Mary,” she muttered.

But something in my voice must have landed. She slowly rose to her feet. She walked over to the window.

And then she saw him.

A man. In a straitjacket. He sprinted out of the porch, his sleeves flapping loose, like a deer bolting from headlights.

She called the police. They came. They found him hiding in the bushes in our backyard. They took him away like it was just another line item on their nightly checklist. There was no coverage in the news. Our neighbors received no warning. He simply vanished like it never happened.

Behind our house was a massive institution, the kind they used to call the asylum, before words like that were deemed cruel. It was a place for the criminally insane. We never talked about it. But everyone knew it was there. It resembled an unfenced nuclear plant. You hoped it would hold. When it didn't hold, you didn't ask questions. No one talked about it.

Yet, my mother told the story every Easter after that. She thought it was hilarious. “Mary, tell them about the Easter Bunny you saw! Oh my god, it jumped right at her!” She loved repeating the part about the flapping sleeves, the way he launched toward me like some deranged jack-in-the-box. It was her party story. Her punchline.

But here’s what I remember:
The jerky, wrong rhythm of his body.
The sound of the screen door slamming behind me.
I was filled with a sense that something had come close to happening. That maybe it still could.
I came to the cold realization that no one was coming to save me—not then, not ever.

That man—whoever he was—wasn’t the Easter Bunny. It was never a joke. He was a warning I didn’t yet know how to interpret. I sensed I was in danger but had no idea how close it truly was. I had to navigate my own way through the shadows and out of that porch to try to make sense of the situation.

Now, I tell this story differently. Not as a punchline, but as a reckoning. It is a map of the moment when innocence collided with something feral. Each detail that once floated like debris in my memory has hardened into something more permanent: a signpost. This lesson has consistently encouraged me to trust my instincts, even when others may not.

The truth is, I was a little girl on a shadowed porch, lost in mystery novels, while an actual mystery crept just beyond the chain-link fence—loose, unguarded, and one breath away from forever altering the trajectory of my life. My parents raised me under the illusion of safety, enforcing rules that sounded like freedom but actually functioned like neglect.

We weren’t protected. We were warned.

Be careful. Don’t talk back. Don’t bring trouble home.
But trouble was already there. It hunched behind the chair, silent and patient, waiting for the right moment to rise up and strike at me. Maybe kill me.

And the scariest part? It didn’t.
But it could have.

Sometimes I still think about him. The man in the straitjacket, his sleeves flailing and his eyes vacant. I wonder what he saw when he looked at me. I wonder what would have happened if I had hesitated. If I hadn’t run out of there, letting the screen door slam shut behind me.

I know things would have been a lot different.

That story is the one my mother used to laugh about every Easter. It isn’t funny. It never was. It’s a reminder of what we dismiss, what we deny, and who we leave to navigate danger without a map.

Danger doesn't always make its presence known. It doesn’t always bang down the door or wear a mask.

Sometimes, it shows up quietly.

Dressed like something harmless.

And sometimes it’s waiting for you, right where you keep your bike.