My Boys

Oxbear found himself on pick-up-Puck-from-school duty that sort of mild gray afternoon, since I had other obligations. Of course this meant I missed out on the possibility of overhearing conversations like this little gem from Wednesday on the playground:

Puck: “I probably won’t be as tall as your dad, but I’ll be fatter.”

Heidi: “You just called my dad fat.”

Puck: “No. But everyone has to have some fat. It’s healthy.”

Heidi: “You mean flubber.”

Puck: “No, flubber just makes you fly.”

(A pretty certain reference to Disney’s 1961 release of “The Absent-Minded Professor”.)

Puck had something important to tell me over the phone on the drive home. I could hear him practically yelling through the speakerphone static, because the only volume Puck recognizes is loud, “MOM! I NEED TO BUY AN ELECTRIC BUTTON ON AMAZON!”

“An electric button?”

He also doesn’t have much patience with anyone who doesn’t immediately comprehend his ideas. “Arg. Dad? Can you just tell her what that is?”

I learned later they had plans to build a control panel together, for something, I’m not sure what. The two inventors.

Yali was being ornery that evening while I baked fish for dinner. I turned around and he was sitting on the table, throwing fresh ginger onto the floor from the fruit bowl. When I told him to scoot, he wrapped himself into a wad in Puck’s green Angry Birds blanket and scooched out of the kitchen to hunt up more trouble, usually with Crackers the cat. He has to say lo siento, I’m sorry, more to that cat than anyone else. Of course, for all the shenanigans he does pull, he usually makes up for it with squeezing koala-tight hugs. Crackers appreciates this just about as much as Yali appreciates sitting in the corner for bothering her in the first place.

When Puck sat down to dinner, I asked him if anything cool had happened at school that day.

He looked out of the window contemplatively for a few moments, munching on a tortilla chip. “Well … I went to recess and had a pretty good time.”