Calvin & Hobbes

“RAAAAWR!”

Yali held up two “claws” over his plate of lunch hot dogs and growled at the table. Then he dipped his nose into his plate and sucked up a piece of hot dog.

Puck stared at him in light disgust. “Eat normally,” he commanded. “Like a human.”

Yali just looked over at me, pretended to burp, and then announced that burp. “Burp,” he grinned.

After lunch, Oxbear took the boys shoe shopping. That gave me about 40 minutes of silence at home – a welcome rarity. When they returned – Puck decked out in sapphire Adidas and a gray Adidas hat, and Yali proudly wearing light-up Paw Patrol sneakers – it was almost time for Puck’s fifth playdate in double the days.

At two o’clock, fourteen year-old Bub from church was dropped off for two hours of running around the yard, scooters, rollerblades, Xbox, and goldfish crackers.

Every once in awhile, I heard bits of their conversation:

“So, Bub, how old was Yoda again when he died?”

“900.”

“Wow. That’s almost as old as the oldest person in the Bible was, remember?”

“Yeah. … Let’s be like Calvin and Hobbes, okay?”

“Okay. I’ll be Calvin, and you can be Hobbes.”

“Well, I thought I was more like Calvin, actually.”

“But I’m literally like Calvin. I have blonde hair.”

Right before dinner, Oxbear returned from running errands with Yali while I was back on the bed trying to fix my shoulder/neck sprain. Another old childhood ailment that sometimes pops up here and there. It was one of those weeks.

“MOM! MOM! MOOOOOOM!”

Yali burst into my room with a bundle of twenty red roses almost as big as himself.

When I took them into the kitchen to put them in a vase, Oxbear opened the freezer to find Yali’s big green rubber dinosaur hanging out with the frozen veggies. When I opened fridge a little while later, there was a hammer sitting in the shelf under Oxbear’s beer.

Yali.