Jokes & Toads

Sunday, April 1, 2007

Another Palm Sunday. Another April Fools’. How often did they coincide? Collette couldn’t recall any particular jokes having been played on anyone she knew on that day for a long time. In fact, she couldn’t recall any pranks ever being played on anyone on that day, whatsoever.

And another Sunday.

Collette recalled the good old days – the nine years of attending Kirk of the Hills. Every morning, rain, sun, shine, snow, daylight’s saving time, they would all leave at 7:15am, washed, pressed, ironed, curled, patent-leather-shoed, and breakfasted.

They would arrive about fifteen minutes before the beginning of the eight o’clock service, sitting usually in the same row on the left side of the church. When Francis and Linnea were born, they would move back to nearly the last row, with thirty empty rows between them and the rest of the congregation in their seats.

Following the very traditional service, they would walk down the center aisle to greet Dr. Trade-Winds, who always knew each of them by name and would often give high-fives to the youngest ones.

After Sunday School, Dad would usually take them down to Old Saint Charles in the later years to visit Great Grandma Jewel. And on the first Sunday of the month, there would be donuts afterward.

Those were the golden years.

At church that morning, the winds were absolutely fantastic, almost cold. Such powerful winds, they blew Collette down the sidewalk.

While they waited for the service to begin, Chester had come up to Francis to talk over things, as usual.

“Hey, Francis. You know Cupcake, our dog? Well, she ate a whole bag of chocolate chip cookies.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yeah, and so now she’s in the dog hospital. And she’s probably dying right now.”

Chester let the reality of the sadness of the situation sink in for awhile.

“April Fools!” He crowed a short time later.

“Aw!” Francis exclaimed, having been completely duped.

Even Mrs. Turtle had one for Mom that morning.

“Adelaide, did I tell you that Idlewild is expecting twins?”

Mom fell for it, and Mrs. Turtle triumphantly pulled her joke for the day.

After church, OLeif and Joe went off to the guys’ discipleship group with Ben-Hur and Augustus. Collette spent the afternoon with Francis and Linnea. Rose spent part of her afternoon wandering around the backyard with her camera. She also had a new little friend – a fat toad who seemed to have ballooned himself into the incapacity to walk.

“I think the toad ate your frog,” Dad said, over lunch. “I don’t see the frog anywhere in your cage anymore.”

“No, toad and frog are friends,” Rose insisted.

“Isn’t that the name of a book?” Collette asked.

“He’s such a stubborn toad,” Linnea had said to Collette earlier. “Watch this.”

Taking a pen off of Rose’s desk she prodded the bloated toad from behind, where he sat on a small rock. He wouldn’t move. Linnea pushed a little harder and shifted him onto the white pebbly beach. He still wouldn’t move.

“See?” Linnea giggled.

Later, Rose brought him outside for his “hopping session”, but he wouldn’t hop. Rose returned him to his aquarium.

He was the only toad Collette had ever seen who would lie on his back in the palm of Rose’s hand, content to do nothing but that, staring at the ceiling. He didn’t move a muscle – just lay there like a lead balloon.

“Maybe there is something wrong with him,” Rose sighed.

Meanwhile, Francis and Linnea were whipping each other with palm branches in the living room from that morning’s service, and laughing hysterically.

Soon, OLeif returned with Joe and Augustus with QT drinks. They entertained themselves for awhile with the project OLeif had created for Francis and Linnea – a time capsule. He had brought them a small empty paint can, which they stuffed to the brim with Linnea’s odds and ends and a note which Francis wrote, to be opened six years later before Francis graduated from high school.

Then OLeif, Augustus, and Rose headed off to the coffee house before youth began. This was after OLeif had spent an hour tickling and/or torturing Augustus, Rose, and Linnea over various circumstances.

And Dad took Mom, Collette, Francis, and Linnea up to the school yard by the old cabins. Mom and Collette sat in the wind while Dad played a long game of dodge ball with the kids while they all screamed and giggled and ran around the play equipment.

Upon return to the house, Carrie-Bri had returned from another day at work and left shortly later with Elizabeth and Lucia after eating several leftover cherry turnovers from lunch. Meanwhile, Joe took off for the South’s for a game of Capture the Flag in the woods with Wallace, Curly, Lolli, Starr, and Tor.

And the wind continued to flail marvelously under a great white moon.

“While humanity will survive, hundreds of millions, maybe billions of people may not, according to the chart — if the worst scenarios happen.”

– CNN (regarding global warming)