Old Friends from Eight Years of Sunday School
Friday, January 6, 2006
[6:53am] After a sleepy morning and afternoon at work, and a pleasant birthday lunch for herself, Isabella, and Jimmy at O’Charley’s, OLeif and Collette returned to the apartment. Carrie-Bri, Joe, and Rose soon showed up, as did Curly shortly later. And they enjoyed more “Donald Duck” and joking around over cocoa and a batch of OLeif’s chocolate chip cookies.
Meawhile, Carrie-Bri was disappointed because “Trenton” from Hot Topic had been leaked the secret of her affections for him by the most untoward and inappropriate teasings from Louis, Paige, and Ashley in his presence.
“He knows now,” Carrie sighed over IM later. “So that’s over with.”
Loved for his stick-li-ness, lack of heighth, and rooster-fashioned black locks, Collette knew that Carrie would have little trouble finding another such gorgeous young man along the way. And though Ashley had attempted to contact Ernest over the new facebook, there seemed little hope in that matter.
And, as Carrie informed her later, that same evening, Louis had chased Elizabeth around the parking lot for a kiss, while Elizabeth squealed for mercy. Apparently he had succeeded, albeit the kiss was a small one. It continuously surprised Collette just how much all the current college students were acting more and more like junior high classmates as time went on. It was funny, but strange.
Later Friday morning at work, Collette chugged down the first Coke she had had in awhile, while finishing up the last of the 228 bulletins (as there were no available volunteers that morning). The days were deliciously gloomy that week, although the sun had briefly popped out for the late morning. And there was little going on that week, despite the apparent busyness of everything surrounding it. The evening would likely be free, and the boys (meaning Joe, Wally (whose wisdom teeth had just been pulled), and Curly) would be attending Pooch (Yaotl) West’s computer game party.
In other notables of the day: Collette stumbled across a missionary to Switzerland amongst church attendance from Christmas morning (a highly unlikely place to mission, however, much needed, as Collette had heard). She had also sent a message to Hoshaiah Grance over Carrie-Bri’s facebook account at Auburn:
“Hi, Hoshaiah,
This is Collette Snicketts. (Well, that was my maiden name, anyway.) I don’t know if you remember me, but I went to Kirk of the Hills for a long time. I was in Sunday School with you and Biff Goose, Kite-Belinda Sops, Pippie Gullables, etc. Anyway, my sister (Carrie-Bri) was on her facebook account, and I ran across you. It’s neat to see how many of the kids from Sunday School are on here from all those years ago. Hope all is well with you and your family – (saw your folks from a distance at the R.C. Sproul conference this past fall). Anyway, just wanted to say hey – God bless. =)”
It was likely one of those messages that would be lost, and never replied. But it was worth the effort, anyway. Old ties were important. And OLeif’s thumb-drive had fallen off his key chain while Collette had walked down to the mailbox; and although it had been run over by a car – it still worked. It was also found that the broken dam which had split in southern Missouri the month before (releasing over one billion gallons of water) had likely been caused by its walls having been sinking for decades. Collette found a picture in a Reformed quarterly magazine – a picture of a pile of rain-washed junk with a sign in front which read in bold spray-painted letters:
“THIS PILE OF STUFF WAS NOT OUR LIFE. OUR LIFE IS IN CHRIST.”
And beneath the picture was written the title of its subsequent article:
“Life After Hurricane Katrina”
Collette cut it out and taped it to the front of her ledger.