I'd Say That's Marked Improvement

The thing about post season is – I stop paying attention.

To most things.

Particularly after a particularly amazing – or particularly horrible – game.

Example: at breakfast, I eventually noticed Puck was slurping milk out of an enormous glass salad bowl, something he obviously rigged himself. Looking up from post game interviews two minutes – or half an hour – later [who can say really?], he was guzzling it with a half-cup dry measurer.

Sure, Puck has some interest too. Didn’t he ask me last Thursday, or was it Saturday?…

“Do the Cardinals not have victory?” I believe he was genuinely alarmed for a moment.

I forced myself away from the dramas of the media and sat down to read Lewis and E. B. White to Puck while he stuffed pennies [Joe had given him a few tons] into his clean socks…

“I made bean bags, Mom!”

“Doesn’t this music make you feel important?”

[Puck was listening to a little ditty he liked: “Down Under”.]

“Well, son…”

“Mirrors” by Justin Timberlake.

“This music makes me feel very, very, VERY important!”

I wondered if maybe he hadn’t struck on a mini revelation there.

As game time edged closer, Carrie texted me…

“I’m as nervous as a bean, as Puck would say.”

“CAAAAL-VIN!… CAAAAL-VIN!”

Puck was being summoned. He threw on his new winter coat from Linnea, fifty cents at some flea market or someplace, Iceland hat, and tore around the neighborhood for two and a half hours with all the kids apparently on “Hallowe’en Break”, but I think we all know why there’s really no school during the third week in October. Anyway, just a few tears and an, “Is my tooth bloody, Mom?” and I think we call that a good afternoon.

6:30.

Things were looking up.