Ch. 204; Vol. 10
It was somewhere in the middle of I-can’t-remember this morning, and Puck had new ideas to share…
“Don’t you wish that strawberry trees would shoot strawberries up into the air?”
“Well…”
“And bananas would shoot down into the ground!”
“Well… why the ground?”
“Because, they have so much power. I’m going to make one.”
“How would you make one?”
Puck leaned in to whisper near my ear…
“It will be made of metal!”
“Ahhh…”
“I would just pour apples into the top and it would make sure there were no bruises on them and they would go through the tree and get cut up and put into baskets.”
“You mean the tree would cut out the bruises in the apples?”
“Yes. And you would just do it and turn it on. But if there’s bird poo that goes into the tree…”
– He leaned in again for a whisper. –
“…it will eat it… Pretty disgusting.”
“And why would that happen?”
“It has to, ’cause… it can’t stay there forever.”
“Well, I guess that’s true…”
“And then burning hot lava would come and burn up all the bird poo.”
I decided that road didn’t need to be traveled any further, although I did need to address one small detail…
“But you know strawberries don’t grow on trees, right?”
Puck pointed the old plastic Sega gun – or whatever those old video game gun things from the 90’s come from – into the living room floor…
“Ka-poom! The whole house is BLUEBERRIES RIGHT NOW!”
He grinned, and ran off to fiddle with the lock on the front door…
“Now I’m going to shoot it at the ground so the whole world will turn into blueberries!”
SLAM!
“Watch out, MOM! The world’s about to turn into BLUEBERRIES!”
My hungry son had worked up an appetite for Cream of Wheat, waiting on the table.
Crackers was not interested in our lunch, however, and watched – I can never tell if it’s “smugly” or “sleepily” – from her favorite perch on the cabinet above the refrigerator…
Puck stared her down at the conclusion of the meal…
“Crackers! It’s enough of this joking! Come down!”
“Puck, put all the matchbox cars back in the car box before you come out.”
“Mom, that is going to be where Crackers goes when she dies. It is going to be her grave box.”
So with-fact.
Washable paints, glass jars, water, subterranean gardens… bathroom sink.
“Did you realize paint could be so beautiful, Mom?… Let’s see…” like a jeweler examining an exquisite ruby. “It’s still got the beauty!”
Another check on the developing sugar crystals in The Bear’s library. A few of them…
“OH NO, Mom! Not LASAGNA!”
Yes.
Lasagna.
“Well, what do you know, Mom? Crackers like lasagna just like Garfield!”
Francis called…
“Do you know how to Complete the Square?”
He pulled up to the house about forty-five minutes later with chocolate cookies, asked for a glass of borrowed milk.
