Popcorn Tales
Thursday, May 18, 2006
[6:51am] It was then two days before the 2006 graduation, and OLeif was once again to narrate for the ceremony. It promised to be a few people short of the grand crowd of 2005, and there was a rehearsal that night to sort everything out for the big day. Carrie was also furiously studying for exams, although she had a bad case of the senioritis, and didn’t quite know what to do with herself.
Junior high on Wednesday had been the usual ridiculous cacophony of ridiculousness, punctuated with the often Oh my gosh!. And while the boys drug out their skateboards, they all chowed down on two fresh boxes of Krispy Kreme and a cooler of sodas. Once they were fully stocked of sugar, they went about to wait for parents after Jimmy had done his very best to guide them in looking towards Christ and to remind them that Sinai would be speaking to them the following Wednesday on his travels in Egypt. As he talked, however, Noel and Lilia taped up each other’s mouths with duct tape and Nacchianti and Plato shot rubber bands across the room. They all seemed particularly wild that evening and Jimmy’s and Loraine’s Meg and Donald joined in the chaos. The chaos was quite typical, however.
Meanwhile, there was a remarkable amount of irritation at the office that Thursday morning. Collette’s computer was down from the start; (when OLeif dropped in to check it out in the mid-morning, he said it likely needed a new power supply). Kids were continuously coming in and out, barefoot, swiping ginger ale, tracking mud, singing and talking loudly, the escapees from academic testing taking place in the church. The alarm in the building went off for no apparent reason during the early afternoon. And Ivy had to leave early to take Megan to get her driver’s license, flying out late after one o’clock, almost forgetting her water mug. And someone had left a box of fresh chives in the fridge.
Earlier, however, before the excitement had begun, Arnold-Skye Scot was in the office. He chatted for awhile with Ivy and Collette.
“My aunt who is turning 100 years old this Sunday…” he had been saying, while they were on the subject of popcorn. “Yes. She’s still very much together. She’s just, just an amazing woman… Anyway, funny story about Orville Redenbacher…”
And he proceeded to tell them about how his aunt went to high school in Indiana with Orville Redenbacher.
“And you’ll see in their yearbook, that he looks just the same in high school. Big classes, hair slicked down and parted…”
And apparently, his aunt was at one time going to go on a date with Orville.
“When we asked her about it, she said, ‘Don’t remind me about it. He was a fast boy. And I wasn’t allowed to date fast boys.'” Arnold chuckled, “And I’ll never forget her granddaughter saying to her when she first heard, ‘Grandma, do you mean we could have been in the popcorn business?'”
They had a few good laughs over it. And then Ivy told them about how Goofy Nickels came through the office the previous morning (after again doing some testing at the church) to pop popcorn.
“And he told me that you set the time, press start three times… And I asked him about how pressing it three times worked.” Arnold started laughing as Ivy continued. “And he said, ‘I have no idea, but it works.’ And then he said you wait till it starts beeping and then when fifteen seconds are left you press start again and take it out as soon as it starts beeping again. And he was telling me how he popped popcorn for everyone in his family. I mean his parents, his sister… He was giving me the list. His grandparents, aunts, uncles, and he pops at least one bag every day. But it was some good popcorn, didn’t burn… nothing.”
Arnold laughed. The amusing carryings-on of children.
In other news, Grandma Combs had given OLeif a mah-jongg set for his 22nd birthday, a little early. And Collette was determined that one evening soon they would sit down and figure out how to play it.
“He is the quietest man I ever did see.” – Abraham Lincoln (speaking of General Ulysses S. Grant)