Kids Are Funny

9:45 – school office.

It’s not exactly an uncommon site: the child who took it a little too far in the classroom and landed himself in the principal’s office, so to speak. Today, it was a blonde-headed kid sitting behind an ice cream bucket full of crayons. As the staff meeting commenced, however, I could tell a bucket of crayons wasn’t going to contain this young man for long. After taking a particular phone call, I turned back to see that he had created a long chain of paperclips and was literally jump roping with it in the corner of the office.

“YES!” he declared, as he successfully skipped across the flimsy metallic chain.

After Ditto, I walked next door for a small bag of York Peppermint Patties. I was feeling a headache coming on, and figured this was the best cure.

Waiting in line to check out, a tiny girl with dark skin and four black pigtails tied with bright chunky hair ties, stared up at me.

“I GOT A BAT!” she announced proudly.

“You got a bat?”

“Look!” she ran over to her mom’s shopping bags and lifted a purple plastic bat high into the air like it was a newly won Olympic medal.

After dinner, Puck covered the kitchen table with markers and scraps of paper, dissecting ink pens until blue ink coated his fingers and some of his face, before he tore back outside with the giant pretzel jug of rubber bouncy balls to toss up and down the street with the neighbor girls. I plunked him in the shower just as Joe and Rose pulled up the street for dinner.

Puck had just been tucked in for the night when Francis pulled up for soft tacos and ice cream drumsticks. He tested out Oxbear’s weight lifting equipment in the basement while I fixed him a plate.

“Wash your hands,” Rose scolded him. “You’ll get a staph infection.”

Meanwhile, as Michael Wacha dolled out pitches from Busch Stadium in hi-def on the basement television, Joe exhibited the contours of his calf muscles from biking to work every morning.

“Eew.”

“Gross.”

“Put that away.”

So between listening to Oxbear and my siblings chat about ridiculous nonsense…

“Have you ever seen a bug in a tutu dancing the tango?” Rose asked Francis.

“Yup. I killed it.”

…I managed to catch a few good innings on the screen before ten o’clock.