Four
A last quiet day before everything started happening. With my little brother – as he put it – about to become “Mr. Joe Snicketts,” there was a surprising lack of things for me to do leading four days up to the wedding. About the biggest thing on my list was hunting up a pair of matching socks for Puck.
Even as El Oso walked out the door to work that morning, I could feel a mild mugginess forming, that warm mugginess of a St. Louis spring. All 80s here and on out. About time.
It being Puck’s week off of school, we lazed around another morning. A little “Archibulb” on the iPad (strategy/logic games) for my little man while I caught up on a stack of random necessities that I wouldn’t have time to get done later.
I sent Puck off to Quiet Hour after making sure he finished his lunch glass of water. That kid always forgets to drink. I heard the steady chug from the other room. He walked in to find me, gulping some air, to explain himself:
“Gladly … I took two burps so I wouldn’t die or something.”
“I doubt you would have died from that, bud.”
“Well, I would have had a heart attack.”
This probability didn’t seem to bother him.
Target.
Found that pair of dress socks for the young lad. A bag of Hershey’s milk chocolate drops. But the big deal for our visit was Puck’s birthday gift card, still unused, which naturally meant a visit to the Lego aisle. After careful deliberation, Puck made his choice: a wild west hang-glider set. He was so overwhelmed with the awesomeness of his choice that he exulted loudly – and repeatedly – past at least ten more aisles:
“I CAN’T BELIEVE IT! YA-HAY-AY! … YAY!!!! … YAY!!!!”
When the checker handed back his card following the transaction, she informed Puck that he had eighty-eight cents remaining on his card.
“Yay! Now I can get another Lego set!”
“Well, maybe some gum?” the checker offered a reality check.
“Or maybe a Lego set,” Puck repeated to me as we exited the building.
Clearly taking after his optimistic father.
Half-way through Waino’s one-hitter on a fuzzy-probably-pirated-website that evening, I explained to El Oso:
“I had a feeling he was going to pitch good tonight.”
He turned to me and said, in his usual honest El Oso way:
“I didn’t.”