Banana Oil

Friday, September 23, 2005

It was the morning of the Sproul conference, and Collette did not wake to a sore neck or shoulder, for which she was most thankful. Instead, she hurried to get ready, putting water on to boil for tea, wearing her new earrings from Rose (which she had beaded on Sunday afternoon on the drive – of brown and cream beads), and reading through devotions with OLeif before 7:50 came around.

It was the usual Friday morning, and Collette’s thoughts were going all over the place. Thursday and Friday always passed so very quickly. But then again, so did the weekend and Mondays through Wednesdays. Seeing each day leave as quickly as it came, continuously reminded Collette of her home, the place to which she journeyed. It was comforting to know that the short years on earth were only the blink of an eye before eternity with Christ.

Things came to mind that morning which Collette had failed to document earlier:

There was the small piece of pottery which she had found at the second archeology dig. Perhaps it wasn’t pottery, but ceramic. It was very small, but a distinct pattern of white and blue had been painted on it. And now that Aunt Petunia and Lucia had joined the dig, the pipe bowl and large part of a dish had been found. When Grandma, Mom, and Collette had closed the dig that day, they had only been centimeters above the pipe. “Lumberjack”, the dig site supervisor, had been quite excited.

There was also the fact of Rose – If it had not already been mentioned in previous documents, there was a time when Rose was “innocent” and gullible. This, of course, was taken great advantage of by Joe and Carrie. Carrie’s shockingly simple idea was to train Rose to believe that the words “trout” and “peppermint stick” were bad words, never to be used. And so she would (with the collaboration of Joe) have conversations around these words.

“What the trout!” Carrie would yell, and cover her mouth.

“Carrie!” Joe would say, in a most alarmed manner. “You know Dad doesn’t let you say that!”

“Oh, don’t tell him I said it!”

Wink, wink.

Of course this all took place in the near vicinity of Rose, and she grew up for a short time, believing that these words were evil. Naturally, being the tattle-tale that she once was, she would tell Mom of the “terrible” language being used by her siblings. And of course, no one else could understand what in the world she was talking about. But eventually, her gullibleness was remedied and she came up with her own expressions, including:

“Banana oil!”

or

“Pickle juice!”

And such sayings were passed down as the infamous phrases of Rose Snicketts.