No High Five for Yali

Puck and I sat on my bed about eight o’clock Saturday morning. His math textbook was open in front of him, while he tried to concentrate over the yelling of Yali in the hallway. The yelling was due to the fact that the granddaughter of Puck’s music teacher, a little girl with curly brown hair, had come over for a visit with her dad and all of Oxbear’s other buddies, for breakfast and Bible study. And something about that fact had convinced Yali that he needed to show off. And of course yelling up and down the hallway was the most effective way to reach that goal.

“He really is showing off for that little girl, isn’t he, Mom?” Puck asked me.

“It would appear so.”

“Should I go out there and talk to him?”

“Well…”

“Actually, Mom, Yali wouldn’t like that because I’d break his show off, and then that little girl would look up to me instead. So I guess I shouldn’t go out there.”

“It’s good of you to be sensitive to that, buddy.”

Forty-five minutes later, our friend and Spanish teacher arrived with a box of kolaches from The Kolache Factory. So we had kolaches upstairs while Oxbear, his buddies, and the kids, mingled downstairs over many scrambled eggs and bacon.

Later, Oxbear told me that the little girl with curly brown hair gave everyone a high five before she left, except for Yali. She flat out refused him. So Yali bowed his head, slumped his shoulders, and walked away. No high five for Yali.

The afternoon included a four-hour birthday party out in O’Fallon for Puck. When he was picked up with a bag of goodies at six o’clock, Oxbear informed me of a conversation that had taken place between Puck and his buddy:

Bub: “Want to hear about the time I had to face off against time traveling fish?”

Puck: “Sure.”

Bub: “Unfortunately I can’t, because it never happened.”

And then while Oxbear and Puck drove down to Arnold, Missouri, to hear Curly and Lulu play a concert with the Gettys, I put Yali down to sleep and holed up in my room with several episodes of that Colombian telenovela. Because now that I’ve started, I have to finish it.