Haggis & The Missing Link
Friday, August 19, 2005
It was time for another trip back to Chicago. And this time, instead of the quiet ride back in February, 10 girls would pile into the big slug and head north. Collette rather wondered how silly it would all get; nothing would surprise her.
As she prepared to leave that morning, OLeif was reading Knowing Scripture where R.C. Sproul referred to having to learn Dutch for his graduate work in the Netherlands, where he picked up 9,000 words reading a theologian’s work with a dictionary for reference. Fascinating…
Collette had seen the other day, coming home from World Market, a blueberry blue station wagon with a Scottish flag on the bumper. The license plate read “HAGGIS”. She had to smile over that one… Who could manage to down a sheep’s stomach bag of oatmeal, boiled deer liver, and Jamaica pepper without becoming sick?
And Spurgeon was to be married the following June to a girl who was two years his senior and of even a smaller and stockier build than himself. Collette remembered her from orchestra – another violinist. Pug nose, thick sand-blond hair, and a Southern Baptist. Her father, as Joseph related, laughing quite heartily in imitating Spurgeon, was “the professor of poetic languages”, or some sort of similar thing, at Lindenwood, as Spurgeon constantly reminded him. Collette was surprised to see that Spurgeon and his girl would end up marvelously together, regarding their personalities, although she couldn’t quite imagine him being married so soon. As for Spurgeon, he was very much like Mr. Collins in Pride & Prejudice.
Collette had also seen a dear old friend of the family at the funeral, the sweet elderly German grandma, Mrs. Dinner. She had known Collette’s parents before she was born, from church. And as they chatted a little, she told Collette that she had just come across an unopened package of napkins the other day, which she had saved from Mom’s baby shower when she had been expecting Collette. Twenty-one year old napkins, saved all those years. Collette laughed to hear it… And Mrs. Dinner said she would bring one to her the next time they met.
Joseph and OLeif discussed tattoos among many other things, over the coffee Thursday night. The nineteen year-old had mischief in his blue eyes when he said,
“I just want to get the whole Noah’s Ark scene tattooed on my back… All those animals just lumbering up there…”
“Yeah, or you could get the whole scene of Revelation all over your body, like that one guy did,” OLeif said.
They also discussed facial hair and how OLeif looked like the “missing link” when he grew a full beard. And Joseph went to one home coming with sideburns grown out toward his mouth in two lines (as his school code allowed no facial hair, but said nothing about side burns); quite ridiculous…