My Love for Cardboard is Insane

During the sermon that morning, Puck’s mind was obviously wandering again. He passed an index card to Oxbear. Granted, the handwriting was even done in cursive, and completely legible, but it read:

“what can i do to get 100 dollers?”

It was early afternoon and almost the whole family was together at the Big House before caravaning to Belleville. After homemade spanakopita, Puck walked into the living room.

“Listen to my rhyme, Dad. I just made this up. Okay. – ‘My love for cardboard is insane… But I cannot refrain… from telling you my pain… about plastic.’”

Belleville: Ben’s.

Sort of an old-fashioned department/five-and-dime store that Mom and Grandma had discovered in some of their local travels. As we parked and walked past the long glass storefront packed with goodies, Puck’s eyes got big.

“THIS IS AMAZING!”

Yali wasn’t far behind him. So while both my young shoppers took off into the aisles – namely dinosaurs for Yali and, just about everything else, for Puck – I took note of the shelves of chocolate near the cash register. Because that’s all I ever really need.

We left some time later, all ten of us, with some good loot. My piece was obviously two king-sized Reese’s peanut butter cups.

When we got back to the Big House – after a little detour through East St. Louis (Oxbear’s idea) – the boys felt the need to raid the pantry immediately, as usual. Didn’t take long for Puck to find the caramel apples.

“Mom! Can I have a happy apple? PLEEEEASE!”

“Didn’t you just have Cheez-Its?”

“Yes, but,” – and here he basically batted his long blonde eyelashes at me – “I did hard labor today.”

“Hard labor?”

“Yes,” he grinned. “My hard labor was walking around buying things.”