Keep That to Yourself

I listened to the four of them talking in the doorway of Hans’ classroom that afternoon – Big J, Puck, Heidi, and another girl from their class – all of them working on suckers or warheads. A game of hide-and-seek was about to go down, but first, some important questions had to be asked between mouthfuls of candy:

“Who do you like?”

“No.”

“Who do YOU like?”

“Nope.”

“Who do YOU like?”

“Uh, guys? I don’t think we should be talking about this…”

Considering that no one was willing to spill the beans anyway, the conversation was brief. So they moved onto other events like the planned hide-and-seek and, judging by the speed of the game – “tag” – followed by basketball in the gym for Puck and Big J.

On the way home, Puck and I had issues to discuss from the day. At the end of our drive, Puck turned reflective over the conversation from the doorway.

“You know, Mom, even if I like someone right now, it doesn’t mean I know what’s going to happen in the future. God knows what’s going to happen. I don’t. So I’m just going with that. I’m gonna stick with God’s plan. Like, if Mickey likes someone, he can just keep that to himself. Or if Heidi likes someone, she can keep that to herself if she wants to, too.”

Then he walked inside and ate an entire box of strawberries in about five minutes.

While my boys congregated around a pan of lasagna that evening, Puck was apparently inspired by the afternoon’s events to pause for an “emergency” project.

“Puck…”

“Mom! I just have to do something real quick!”

I allowed it while I took Yali to the bathtub for a much needed dunking. When I returned to the kitchen, Puck’s lasagna was gone. So were about half a dozen band-aids; the discarded wrappers on the table proved it. Puck held up the completed project in question.

“This, is a jar of secrets, Mom. All the secrets that I can’t tell you and Dad.”

We had a talk about which secrets were okay to keep, and which secrets were not. Then I sent him to my room with Yali to watch some “Mr. Rogers”.