Ch. 255; Vol. 10

“Mom! Look what CRACKERS DID!”

It’s not a rare phrase, no.

This time? A decapitated black cat, still stuck to the glass patio door.

Really, Crackers?

Just couldn’t stand the competition, eh?

Bær – at home to work – spoke for her later. “This room ain’t big enough for the two of us.”

As Puck and I prepared to wrap up a study in gemstones from the last couple of months…

“So children hundreds of years ago wore jewelry made out of coral. Their parents thought it would keep evil away from them.”

“And that didn’t work,” Puck agreed.

“Right. It was basically superstition.”

“And we don’t need to mess with that,” Puck nodded. “Just like this weight wouldn’t protect you. Unless you threw it at a burglar’s face.”

He gets stuck on this burglar idea sometimes.

“Mom?”

Puck was supposed to be in Quiet Hour. It had been quiet for a little while. I’ll give him that. Especially after I stuck the red tool box filled with Legos on his top bunk – another world.

“Yes, bud.”

“Sometimes Crackers almost claws my face, you know?”

“Tell me how it happens.”

“I stare into her eyes, and she stares into my eyes, and then when I look at her eyeballs and I climb up onto the bunk bed, she almost claws my face. So. I have to climb up on the other side of the bunk bed… It’s always a close call.”

We ran around at the park soaking sun for awhile. Puck hoped for kids but there were none. I participated in “Big Bad Wolf” and “Tag” until my sunshine quota was filled and I retreated to shade for editing. Puck retreated to running rubber-coated metal picnic tables for another game. We do our best.

“The Shaggy Dog” was next in line on the Disney count-down list, more familiar faces from better-known classics. Laughter from my boy over a big bowl of buttered and salted pop corn.

We read books, just like we read books all day long. Kids in cardboard spaceships and junk yard inventions. Puck’s delighted eyes stared excited above toothless grins of awe through the rungs of his bunk bed while I passed from one chapter to the next. This kid is never bored. And if he says he is, I know it’s a fake. Impossible. Not with this kid’s imagination.