Planes & Livers

Just before two o’clock that afternoon, Yali and I met Francis up at school where he unloaded a Francis-sized aluminum (presumably) plane and carried it into the building. About fifteen minutes later, Puck and all of his classmates assembled together to hear about aircraft maintenance. This included riveting the wings to the body of the plane after Francis entertained them with all kinds of facts about aircraft, including that one time a plane took off from Hawaii in the 80s and the whole top of the plane was stripped off “like a sardine can” to the night sky. Before aircraft was improved. This story was definitely appreciated by nine year-old boys and girls, alike, some of whom insisted they wouldn’t be scared if the same thing happened to them.

A couple of hours later, Puck, Big J, and Yali ran around the house together after I served them egg salad for dinner. Before tumbling gymnast-style on the basement couches for awhile, they worked on pulling Crackers the Cat out of hiding.

To help in their efforts, I brought out the chicken liver that Gloria had given me on Thursday. I put it in a bowl and handed it to Yali to bring to the boys. He stared at the shiny brown organ.

He looked at me. “CHOCK-ET?”

“No, no, Yali. It’s not chocolate. Don’t eat it. That’s liver for the cat to eat. Not you.”

“Oh.”

A few minutes later, Big J shouted out a report on Crackers and the chicken liver. “SHE’S EATING IT! SHE’S EATING IT!”

Just as it was getting dark, the boys asked to walk to Walgreen’s for more suckers.

“Come on, Big J,” Puck urged him, running across the yard. “I’ll beat you there!”

“Yeah, you’re not carrying a 30-pound kid with you!” Big J called to him.

Eventually, the 30-pound kid was returned to me so the boys could squeeze through the hole in the hedge.

We walked back with a total of five suckers, and eventually a very teary Yali once he realized that he would not be allowed to finish the entire ball of candy before his bedtime.