Hold the Chicken

Sometime that afternoon, Yali and Patience came stomping down the basement stairs, arraigned in serious battle equipment. Yali in orange space suit, Rose in firefighter overalls, both bearing Nerf guns.

“NOBODY MOVE!” Yali bellowed. He pushed a plush fowl into my arms. “Hold the chicken. He’s crazy.”

Yali and Rose then ran around the storage room awhile before returning…

“Mom…” Yali looked at me seriously, “have you seen a bad guy named… Squirrel?”

After a few moments spent battling what was apparently a “little white squirrel” under the coffee table, Yali followed the fight with further orders to his young minion…

“Patience! Bring the chicken! And the telegram!”

Patience retrieved the yellow fowl from my arms, and lifted a stapled stack of pencil-scrawled papers from the coffee table, an important police document Yali had created earlier that afternoon.

Some time later that evening, I heard them talking through more adventures at the dinner table…

“Patience, you little cutie pie. Patience, say, ‘Yali! You’re a genius!’”