Exterminación del Piñata

Two things I realized pertaining to piñatas: one, a Honduran child is at least ten times more excited about the prospect of a piñata than every other child I’ve seen prepare to break one open (combined); second, a Honduran child is entirely capable of and willing to (more wanting to) utterly and completely destroy a piñata if given the chance. Like the mountain cat, I wish I had made a video of this event transpiring (I really need to start carrying a camera with me), but for lack of better medium I will attempt to briefly describe the event in words.

The target of the children’s attack was a big red dog (see: Clifford) piñata. The ETA (estimated time of attack) was set to be at the end of the group meeting, but this didn’t stop the children from throwing balled-up rope/pens/babies (maybe not that last one) at the highly, and somewhat ominously, hanging piñata. Before long, it was piñata time. It quickly became apparent that the kids couldn’t do much damage when blindfolded (we made it through the entire line-up with hardly a noticeable dent), so the blindfolds were taken off. This lead to greater contact being made, yet still the piñata persisted. Soon, two kids would join the attack together, and de repente (translation: suddenly) the entire mob descended on the piñata like a pack of ravenous wolves onto a big red dog named Clifford. While the bat is the normal weapon of choice for piñata-breaking, these kids preferred to get close and use their hands. Children began jumping onto the piñata, and after two or three of them got a hold, Tyler (the volunteer who was operating the up/down functioning of the piñata) was unable to pull the thing back up despite throwing his entire wait into it (he was literally hanging from the rope). At that point, poor Clifford knew his time had come. He was ripped from limb to limb, creating a mess like I had never before seen as pieces of his body were cast aside in a frantic search to obtain more of his delicious and sweet insides (some of the candy was actually really good (especially this dulce de leche sucker with a coco filling)). Wherever Clifford is now, I hope that it may be a happier place.