A Sweet Sixteen to the Wickel Girl
Monday, June 26, 2006
It was Rose’s turn to become sweet sixteen that day.
Previously, Sunday afternoon was spent over fried chicken and mashed potatoes and fruit salad to celebrate Grandma Combs’ belated 70th birthday. Silky’s came afterward for everyone as OLeif, Collette, Joe, and Rose then departed for youth with Jimmy, Ben-Hur, Augustus, Susie, Molly, and Samantha. Following that, Joe took off for a movie at Wallace’s.
Monday was the start of Vacation Bible School for the masses after Rose had been awaken to mounds of balloons on her bed. And this year at Vacation Bible School, they would not be sweltering under tents on the parking lot, but would have access to the frosty stores of air conditioning inside the church. The building itself had already been festooned with palms and breakers and crustaceans. Treasure chests lurked about, and there was likely the whiff of pirate breath in the air somewhere.
Afterwards, Rose applied at Target while Mom purchased pretzels and slushies from two kindly old ladies at the snack bar. After waiting a good while after finishing the application, for someone to speak to her, Rose was denied hirement, as they were not accepting applications at the time.
And so they returned for the rest of the afternoon. They all put on party hats in time for Dad, who arrived at 5:30 to present Rose a beautiful vase of sixteen velvet red roses. In addition, Rose received a bag of strawberry bon-bons and a subscription to National Geographic from OLeif and Collette, a gift card to Wet Seal, the soundtrack to Charlie Chaplin films, and check from the family, and her most coveted “poky stick” – a giant cocoa bean pod on a stick.
“Yay! My poky stick!” She exclaimed happily.
Following dinner and a white cake with chocolate frosting, which Mom had baked up in the afternoon, with sixteen candles (Rose cut them to smoke in one breath), they hurried over to coffee – OLeif, Collette, Carrie, Joe, Magnus, Wallace, Curly, Rose, and Mollie.
And while they chatted over root beers, cinnamon rolls, and magazines, Carrie planned a grand surprise for Elizabeth’s birthday.
After coffee, the troop drove back to the house for several showings of I Love Lucy.
“I love this show!” Magnus practically squealed, as they all settled themselves comfortably on the couches or on the floor in heaps of blankets.
Beforehand, however, OLeif had discovered Rose’s old clarinet, put it together, and began to squawk on it.
“Oooooooh!” Curly rushed into the room. “A clarinet! I love the clarinet! It’s my favorite instrument! Well, almost my favorite instrument. OLeif! Let me play it! Please, OLeif, please! Let me play it! I’ll lend you my guitar! (I’ll just steal Starr’s instead.) Oh, pleeeeee-eeeeeee-eeeeeeeas!”
OLeif brushed him aside grumpily and continued to squeak.
And Rose pushed Curly around with her poky stick while he attacked back with a knife and spoon.
The rest of the evening mostly consisted of the boys misbehaving in a very cavalierish sort of way, and of Rose and Mollie telling them to stop it, whereupon the boys would apologize and continue their cuddling and ridiculous entertainment.
Collette seemed to have developed a philosophy over the course of the viewing that night. Perhaps the home schooling network had so emphasized the unspoken idea that it was practically of the devil to talk about members of the opposite sex while under the age of 27, that the male persuasion of the group decided to take an opposite route. What was so very attractive about playing Lord Byron, Collette could not quite figure.
Fortunately, the boys managed to be sporadically distracted by Rose’s bags of candy which she passed around generously to distract them from their… unmentionable conduct.
On the way back to return Magnus and Mollie, there was a bit of a squall in the back.
“Quit being cold!” Magnus commanded her.
“I can’t help it – my insides are all cold.” Mollie protested.
Magnus thought about this for a brief moment and then dumped the box of beanie babies on top of her head.
“There; maybe they’ll keep you warm.”
“My friends!”
Soon, for some reason Collette could not quite recall, they were back into another beanie baby fight and Mollie had secured the box over her head.
“Do I need to pull this car over?” OLeif threatened. “Do I?”
For a small moment, the battle lulled.
“You pick it up.” Magnus commanded.
“No you.”
And it began again.
“That’s it, I’m pulling this car over,” OLeif squealed the tires into a shopping plaza across from China Queen.
“Magnus, apologize to Mollie!” OLeif commanded.
“Umm, uh… Sorry.”
“Mollie, apologize to Magnus.”
“Oh, oh… OK… Sorry.”
“Alright, now behave, or I’ll have to pull this car over again.”
“Waaaaaaah!” the kids cried.
And that was pretty much the end of Rose’s sixteenth birthday.