Dance-Off

The lawns were that perfect shade of electric green as Collette and Puck drove up to the house that morning in the cold rain.
Later, Puck was in his port-a-crib in the living room. He giggled from time to time at passerby.
“You’re so happy,” Rose said to him cheerfully. “Just wait till you grow up, and then you’ll be all depressed.”
Linnea walked in from the laundry room where an ant had been in need of assistance.
“Poor ant,” she said. “He’s so small and he’s carrying a crumb bigger than himself up the wall.”
She showed him to Collette.
“He’s climbing Everest,” said Collette.
“I know. I had to help him a couple of times.”
Joe lugged in a dusty box of roller skates from older days.
“These are my disco skates,” he said.
The Marbles from down the street had given them to him.
“You know, Frances,” said Mom, walking into the kitchen, “it’s traditional to take your clothes off the hanger before washing them.”
“Oops,” Frances giggled.
“I think you should just have Puck and no more kids,” Frances said to Collette. “That way all of our love will be just for him.”
“Love divides; it doesn’t multiply,” said Mom.
Then she realized what she had said, and laughed.
“I mean, love multiplies, it doesn’t divide.”
“Words of wisdom,” Carrie joked.
“And good thing for you we decided to have more kids, for your sake, Frances,” Mom continued. “Or you would still be a tiny star in the sky waiting for someone to take him.”
She sang a few lines of a Mr. Rogers original from an opera about a star.
“No, then I’d be a star that falls to Earth and blows it up!” said Frances. “And then the sun comes crashing too.”
Then Frances cried over the jalapenos in his lunch wrap, which Carrie had made.
“Ah!!!”
Back at home, late in the afternoon, Collette and Puck listened to Hungarian radio while Puck played with birthday toys.
Later that night, Joe called Collette. He had just come from a “tacky prom” with hopes of winning a contest.
“I won!” he said. “I was in the dance-off and won!”
His prize was an iPod nano. The privileges of having no shame were boundless.