Catapults & Venus
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Puck arrived early in the morning beside the bed for inspection. He pulled down the collar of his shirt to prove that he had not put it on inside-out…
“Look. No flag.”
Collette and Carrie-Bri reminisced… days of the 90’s, selling Kool-aid to passerby stranger…
“I know one of the Cardinals players came by with his kids,” said Carrie. “I recognize him from pictures.”
This was plausible, given the multi-million dollar mansions just down the road. Carrie and their neighbor, Felicity, would do cartwheels in clown costumes and rollerblades and hold giant Kool-Aid signs, respectively, at the entrance to the neighborhood. Joe would act as messenger, hustling on his bike back to the house, yelling…
“They’re coming! They’re coming!”
And Collette would pour drinks and make change, which was never necessary. “Keep the change” was almost standard.
How times changed…
Then Carrie remembered sizing up Bing on “whose show was the best” from the old Friday get-togethers…
“Once, to show I was the best,” said Carrie, “I rode my bike while kicking a ball, eating my blueberry pie, and working a yo-yo. That… didn’t work so well.”
On the way out with Mom that morning, Collette observed the minor leaf and twig damage from the lethal hail the previous evening.
One point five hours with Mom and another great-grandma-aged (though you wouldn’t guess it) lady at church – observing, gridding, measuring, and planning the layout of the church library, after investigating Calvary’s offerings a few roads over. Trim work would begin Friday morning before the men supposedly took over on Saturday.
Puck was scheduling an armada of catapults in the kitchen.
Mostly forks strapped down with straggler rubberbands. And one gizmo stitched together of fat wood bead, two tinker toys, a rubberband, and a wooden spoon.
“A weapon!” he declared proudly.
“How about a… rocket of adventure,” Carrie suggested.
“Yeah,” Puck agreed, studiously affixing more rubberbands. “I’m going to go finish off Uncle Francis.”
Then he mentioned something about, “Lih-ya is visiting her friend who lives in a cemetery, Mama.”
……..
Earlier it had been reported by Carrie that Puck had been carefully petting Earnest saying softly…
“You little sweet pea. Aw. You little sweet pea…”
A few minutes later, Puck had installed himself inside a crash helmet and the old-time orange snow sled which Francis attached to the lawn mower and slid him around the yard for an old-fashioned-new-fashioned carnival ride.
Back working on the “rockets of adventure”…
“Francis. Can you help me with this? Bullies help ‘theirchother’.”
“I’ll help you shoot rubberbands at Mama while I pull you around the yard on the sled, ok?”
“I don’t want to shoot my poor mama!” Puck declared loudly.
Later, Francis was threatening naptime between math lectures and a 1974 broadcast of the super tornado outbreak in the south.
Costco.
Everyone came. The ride out saw Puck sandwiched between Collette and Francis combing at the stuck-up hair in the back of his head…
“Want to see me look original?” he asked Francis, then applied the comb to Francis instead… “I’m combing your hair to make you look nice for the samples,” he added, indicating the food samples to be feasted upon, shortly.
It didn’t take long for the boys to hunt out these snacks tables. Beer chips, acai juice, ice cream, hot dogs…
Then Francis drove off for the final merit badge evaluation.
Collette worked through the remains of a bag of corn chips while pounding through another five family lines.
The transit of Venus began at 5:09 CST.
Unfortunately… no one had any super-grade welder’s masks, so Carrie improvised…
“I need an old videotape,” she said.
Collette rummaged in one of the lockers downstairs. Stashed amongst the tapes – for some inexplicable reason – “Left Behind”.
Yes, that would do.
Carrie began tearing out the film and snipping.
Puck was already marching out with post-its, colored pencils, pen, and glass of water “to do art”…
“Sun’s examining the sun,” he said importantly. “I’m going to examine it, too.”
“Dad’s concerned you’re going to ruin your eyes,” Collette told Carrie, handing Puck a Campbell’s Soup mug of milk.
“Oh, I’ve already ruined them,” she replied, stretching lengths of mirror tape off a well-used roll.
“How?”
“By staring at the sun.”
The glasses were finished. And just the faintest spot of the dark planet could be seen over the red disc in the sky.
Meanwhile, Rose was taking the bosses from San Diego out to dinner.
Little Rose in the corporate world.