Ch. 212; Vol. 10

“JINGLE BUM!… JINGLE BUM!… JINGLE BUM ALL THE WAY!”

This was Tuesday night, Puck changing into his jams…

“JINGLE BUM!… JINGLE BUM!… JINGLE BUM ALL THE WAY!”

“You… want to address that at some point?” I asked The Bear, sitting beside me on the couch.

“Yeah, I should, but… then we wouldn’t get to hear this amazing song.”

Touché.

I… guess…

“GET OFF OF THERE, CRACKERS!”

“Puck…”

“She was detected to my oatmeal! What could I do?”

The morning began.

The Bear had been gone for some time already – breakfast meeting at seven with youth leaders in Kirkwood.

While I made the bed, Puck joined me…

“Where can I get a bunch of bouncy balls?”

“Why do you want a bunch of bouncy balls?”

“So I can glue them to the bottom of my shoes and bounce really high!”

Gray…

Grandma Snicketts was finishing another round of therapy in the living room. Four therapists a week. Three weeks in. Mom, Carrie, and I discussed various options for Grandma’s future housing.

Sun…

Mom and Linnea: two hours with Mrs. English and children…

“Only two hours, I promise,” Mom assured Carrie and myself.

Riiiight…

Almost three decades later, and nothing has changed. An equation to be assured by…

“Five More Minutes” + Mom + Mrs. English = One Hour… Maybe Two.

We didn’t learn all our math from Saxon.

Gray…

Puck: computer games with Carrie, colored block highway/obstacle courses on the kitchen table, Minecraft with Francis, trying Snuggs on the cat leash [he didn’t like it either]. What do I say about this kid living the life…

Then what do you know, Mom pulled up on time after all.

We’ll just ignore this one-time fluke.

“Uh oh.”

“What, Mom?”

“Stand back-to-back with Linnea.”

A few minutes later in front of the antique mirror, it was confirmed. The event had happened…

I was now the shortest kid – and still the oldest – in the family.

Puck rolled around the street on his Strider with the little girl across the street…

“CAN I SHOW HER MY ALLOWANCE, MOM?!”

The “allowance” was actually a ziploc freezer bag packed with coins from his red plastic piggy bank [we had cut off the tail to filter out and count the coins Tuesday night, The Bear and Puck].

And that’s how he socialized this evening.