Ch. 217; Vol. 10
It was going to be one of those mornings…
“But I want to run away to PENNSYLVANIA because I hate school so much.”
I smacked at waves of fruit flies. Puck forgot about his animosity towards writing by 2’s…
“Mom, you keep making a little building for him so he wouldn’t die,” he demonstrated with cupped hands. “You put your hands in really tight and smoosh him. Really tight like this else or he wouldn’t die. You have to do this –“
SLAP!
“…so he will get smooshed. Like that.”
SLAP!
I thanked the bloodthirsty first grader for his advice and directed him back to the whiteboard.
Puck’s academic woes didn’t last for long.
We took a walk around the neighborhood, already in the throes of further inventions…
“Mom! Can we take a walk now so I can use my street cleaner?!”
Street Cleaner: Paint Roller tied to Blue Rope, Dragged on the Street.
[Extra Paint Roller as Back-Up.]
So we did.
Rumble, rumble, rumble.
“I’m cleaning this dirty place up with mah street cleaner!”
The paint roller tumbled behind Puck all the way around the neighborhood, pausing for occasional interesting debris like a battered bamboo stick.
“Street Cleaner does it again!”
“MOM! MOM! COULD YOU TURN ON THE LIME AND THE COCONUT?!?!”
About thirty minutes of unadulterated quiet. Then…
Was it an actual problem when – at about two o’clock this afternoon – I actually confused my son’s imitation tornado siren for an actual tornado siren…
Cultural studies later in the afternoon revealed more inevitable sketches of children running around in ancient Sumer without clothes. I explained sin and Adam and Eve and fig leaves…
“Why can babies be naked then?” Puck had to ask. “Because they’re too little and don’t know about sin?”
Dinner of more rice bowls found Puck asking further questions inspired by the children’s catechism…
“Are there aliens?”
“I guess it might depend on your definition of aliens…”
“Someone who can breathe in outer space?”
“Well… I guess you could think of the angels as possibly being like that…?”
Sometimes I just walk myself into trouble.
“Really?!”
“Well, have you ever heard of an angel wearing a spacesuit?”
Sometimes, I just hear my head telling me to stop.
Then halfway through studying a remote tribe in Vietnam, Puck cut in with the usual emphasis and urgency of a critical CEO meeting…
“Mom, a spider web has formed in our digging hole. I think you should clear that before we keep digging.”
And later…
“Mom, I just don’t get it why people are greedy for diamonds. It’s just a piece of glass,” he said with a little important shrug and some conversational hand gestures. “I don’t get it. It’s just a piece of glass formed by water or poisonous fluids. I just don’t get it.”
Puck: Ant Hunter
[Sunday Afternoon at the Big House]