Boating the Lake

Carrie-Bri was already waiting for us in the basin at Forest Park. While Mom and Grandma attended a lecture at the History Museum, she had some time to kill, so we joined her for a walk through the groves around the lake.

By the time we arrived at the Boat House, Francis had called me about his just-finished math test, a test he needed to pass in order to begin A&P classes that fall.

“They told me I got zero questions right out of 45,” he griped. “There is no way I got zero problems right.”

When he showed up a few minutes later to join our party, he handed the wrinkled test report to Carrie.

“Did you wrinkle this up because you were mad?” she laughed.

Francis just grinned. After perusing the paper, neither Carrie nor I were able to tell with one hundred percent accuracy what, exactly, his final score was. So we walked to the boat house to rent a paddle boat for an hour on the lake. Francis and Puck took the paddles while we girls hitched along in the back with Yali, wrapped in an orange life vest about as big as himself.

After awhile, Francis and Puck were getting tired of the snail’s pace of the paddle boat. Initially they blamed it on the weight in the back. But then they began to pass other paddlers.

“Ha ha,” Francis grinned. “One boat surpassed.”

“They can hear you, Francis,” Carrie told him.

“So? They’re just a bunch of kids.”

“Probably know more math than you do.”

“Hey!”

Somewhere around an hour later the five of us walked back to the cars, Yali spending most of his time giggling on Francis’ shoulders. There were fat chocolate chip cookies waiting at Carrie’s car.

The boys and I made a stop at Trader Joe’s on the way back for a few groceries. As we checked out, Puck noticed a variety of coloring sheets displayed on the store’s windows.

“If you take one of those sheets and color it, you can bring it back for a prize,” the checker answered his question.

As we hit the road home, Puck examined his blank coloring sheet and mused on an afternoon of coloring ahead of him. “Trader Joe’s hasn’t seen the kind of art that I can do,” he explained humbly to me. “I’m going to put most of my effort into this.”

Later that afternoon Francis informed the Snicketts sibling group text that he had, indeed, passed his math test for A&P.