Dancing Holes in the Carpet
Monday, July 24, 2006
Chester Hobcoggin’s 11th and the first anniversary of Shepherd and Malaya Pretzel.
Sunday evening, the four girls gathered together once again to complete their dance over a pitcher of ice water, courtesy of Lonnie and mint double chocolate chip cookies, courtesy of Mrs. English. And the whole family at one time or another, gathered in the basement to take front row seats. Eleda operated the video camera from time to time, jiving to the music, and Jules Verne began to dance himself, while watching from the couch with Leia. They decided to pull in Bing for a cameo appearance. And Tor and Adam-Age made suggestions from time to time.
Two-thirds of the way through, they took a break while Eve scooted for a caffeine break. Diana and Carrie discussed how to improve their fight scene.
“Man, you should have seen Kitts and I when we were in Kuk Sool Won,” Carrie laughed. “We did sparring, fighting. And out first time to do it, it was just the two of us and we had an audience, which is always a dangerous thing. And we started getting so into it, we started punching each other. We called Kitts the Welsh Windmill, because she just started flailing her arms, no style whatsoever,” Carrie got up to demonstrate. “You couldn’t get near her. And everyone thought we were really angry at each other. I had bruises on my chin the next morning, I was black and blue. They had to pull us apart and offered us to teach sparring classes!”
Finally, finally, after recording after recording, they thought they had a piece worth while. Everyone gathered in the basement to watch the final cut.
“It smells like a sweat room in here!” Mrs. English exclaimed, entering the basement.
The girls hadn’t even noticed the smell, they had been concentrating so hard. And as the tape rolled, they found their prize.
“Yay!”
Everyone began to clap and cheer.
“That’s it! That’s the one!”
So what if it wasn’t a mirrored image and earned only two stars amongst the Ok Go fans? It was fun, and four happy girls called it a night, all four soaked through to the skin, and the results were published on youtube the following morning. Forty-five minutes later Mom and Collette greeted the nineteen ragamuffins from their exhausting week in the dark church parking lot. The guys gave each other big bear group hugs goodbye, as though they might not ever see each other again. And they parted ways at 10:30 at night.
Meanwhile, Monday morning, back into another week, Carrie-Bri chased Rose in circles around the house for no apparent reason while Collette attempted to work through with Rose her schedule for psychology class exams. And Joe and Rose shared all the happenings of New Orleans before they left quickly with Frances and Linnea for the Hobcoggins to attend the City Museum, swimming, and hot dogs for Chester’s birthday.
There were odd tales being told of the devastation in New Orleans: the refrigerators – every fridge in the rubble houses had been unopened for nearly a year, causing the contents to completely liquefy, even the chicken bones of whole chickens were swimming in themselves. One fridge which had been opened (mistakenly – they were supposed to remain closed and duct-taped shut) triggered the natural gut-reactions of several present at the time. Four immediately vomited upon its opening.
And there was the usual babble of cuddle-fests, obnoxious travel conversations (if they could be called conversations), shooting rampages (400 photos of the same thing), petting alligators… the odder things coming out of a youth mission trip.