Rotted Apples
Monday, April 2, 2012
Another dream sequence.
This time, it was keeping a low profile in Colombia – while grocery shopping on a warm summer night.
Ninety-two.
Where was the rain?
Where was the thunder and the lightening?
Where were the tornado warnings?
Blah.
Puck sat at the breakfast table with a cup of yogurt and a thick campfire matchstick box stuffed with change. He had been on a pirate treasure hunt in the backyard with Rose the previous afternoon. This included a hand-drawn treasure map, as dictated by Puck to Rose. And maybe a few chocolate pennies thrown in there as well.
“Want some, Dad?” Puck asked.
“Well… I’m allergic to gold…”
“I’ll be happy to take that wedding ring off your hands then,” Carrie replied.
“Mama?”
– Puck was wrapping up breakfast… –
“Could you give Donkey… a nice, juicy cheese?… And one for me, too?”
“Maybe later, bud.”
Puck was not very bothered…
“Donkey is the only treasure I ever had for a long time.”
A couple of sugared yellow Peeps, from Gloria. Puck enjoyed the flavor, but the idea of eating “chicks” provided consternation…
“I don’t want to eat them anymore, Mama. I feel like they’re dying. You see. It’s hard for little boys to eat marshmallows that look like them. And if they don’t want to eat them, they don’t have to eat them.”
And later…
“This scab has been on me for weeks. Why won’t it move to regular skin?”
Together, they read a little of The Book of Think, one of OLeif’s childhood books, which included tricks for cutting out sensory overload to think properly, from various persons of the past, including…
“Dr. Samuel Johnson had to have a purring cat, orange peel, and tea… Johann Schiller needed to fill his desk with rotten apples.”
Collette was feeling tired and discombobulated by the afternoon.
Allergies were already punching blows.
Highly annoying.
Puck was struggling, stacking away all of the Highlights magazines he had pulled from his shelves during Quiet Hour.
“You need to figure out the problem,” Collette advised him.
“I need you to help me think, Mama… I need some rotted apples.”
OLeif returned with a package of Heath Klondike bars – for his fish sandwiches, another run-through his sermon, and down by nine in preparation for a full day of work, two classes, preaching the following day, and something about needing to listen to the band – Cornmeal. Plus some more roughhousing with Puck, per the little man’s request, after he had rescued another flipped June bug on the porch.