No Time to be Bored
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Collette was awoken twice in the night with her right knee in pain. She suspected a change in the weather by it…
The second Sunday in January saw Sunday School classes resuming for the quarter. Although Puck, dragging a wooden yo-yo behind him, by which he believed he was ‘walking the dog’, would have nothing to do with it, so he sat with his daddy in Mr. Honey’s class instead, which worked out well enough, while Collette and Francis once again sat in on Judah’s class, discussing the global church’s responsibility in the AIDS epidemic.
Back to the house where Carrie-Bri and Collette briefly discussed their weird childhood fears, such as volcanoes and tapeworms…
Linnea dished up a glass of chocolate ice cream.
OLeif and Puck watched Bambi in the basement.
And Joe was off caving with Wally until he returned to Rolla that evening.
Then there was the matter of discussing with Francis and Linnea about how Collette and Carrie had never been bored as kids, waking up at 5:30 or 6:00 to complete all their studies before lunch, and then still not having enough time in the day to catch up with their endless lists of new ideas and creations: worm factories, harvesting dried berries in the backyard to make potpourri, mapping the trees in the yard, mud forts and pottery, bike rides, the Hammock Game, the Cloud-Chasing game, bikes, rollerblading, pogo-sticks, preparations for Friday plays and productions, Olympics, etc., with the English family. Etc. and etc. and etc.
“When we were your age, Linnea,” Collette had explained, “computers were black screens with white text. We only had Word Processor. That was it.”
“Yeah,” said Carrie later, “we would wander out in the woods with the English kids on Fridays, and no one would really know where we were, or how long we were gone.”
There was no time to be bored.
Then lunch and gooey butter cake for dessert.
Rose returned late from church after having helped a girl run some errands and dropping her off back at her place. She then turned on a couple of documentaries of Forest Park.
Linnea crashed on the living room floor after boring herself with reading for the school week.
Into the afternoon…
Carrie walked into the room next, cramming a wedge of gooey butter cake into her mouth.
“Look what happened, you guys, because you weren’t watching me,” she said.
A cold walk for OLeif, Collette, and Puck in the gray afternoon, Puck in his trike peddling furiously down the street in his green mohawk pirate cap like a Dennis the Menace.
OLeif had been given a bottle of new pills for his ‘little buddy’ that smelled exactly of cloves.
And Rose was off that evening to a birthday party for one of the ladies at church. So Carrie got busy preparing Rose’s nails, make-up, and hair, which was becoming rather long, in fact, longer than she had ever grown it, and still with the reddish tint of the henna.
As Carrie worked on that, Mom announced that she was on the talent committee for the youth mission trip fundraiser talent show in February.
“Every Sunday is a talent show at our church,” Rose boasted.
“We do have more land than you do though,” said Mom.
“Our land is worth more,” Carrie grinned.
“Well, our church is worth more,” Mom replied.
“That’s because our church was more frugal,” Carrie and Rose retorted.
Then Dad brought up part of his old McCluer North and MIZZOU memorabilia, including a photograph of Dad as #15 on the MIZZOU football team and artwork that Dad had drawn for the old Sing Out programs.
Puck was interested in feeding the dog a leftover baked potato. He followed Carrie in to the kitchen…
“Excuse me, sir,” he said to her. “Does Trooper not like potatoes?”
And then he was anxious to explain to everyone how worms liked sugar.
Francis fooled with the candles around the fire.
Followed by Dad and Francis picking up the pizza around Jeeves & Wooster, Francis leaving for youth group, booking a hotel in Georgia on the way down to the Atlantic, and recalling how, when Dr. Trade-winds had once found himself in a potentially dangerous situation in Mexico that he had nothing more than ‘a sharp pencil’ to defend himself.