Show Me Your Muscle

By the time I got back from bringing Puck to school, Yali was still rolled up in the blankets on our bed. But no fever. It looked like he was ready to nap the whole day.

“Hey, Yali… want some Cheerios?”

His watery eyes lit up. “CHEERIOS?” (As best he could say it.)

For the rest of the day, he would not stop eating. After he got through four Yali-sized bowls of Honey Nut Cheerios, he was ready to leave the bed and get back to business. And he never looked back. He bounces.

Puck and Heidi sat together at the homework table in Hans’ room, both in their yellow monogrammed school polos and looking like siblings more than ever. Some math was getting done, but also a lot of extraneous conversation.

“Show me your muscle,” Heidi demanded.

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

Puck stared back at her, reluctantly. “I don’t know how to make a muscle. What 4th grade boy doesn’t know how to make a muscle? Look. This is all flub.”

“That’s not flub,” I explained. “That’s muscle. You’re going to be a big guy like your dad. He’s the strongest man I know, so you probably will be, too.”

Heidi had to cut me off right there. “No. Actually, MY dad is the strongest man.”

I wasn’t about to enter that battle.

Sometime later, I let them take five when they were about halfway through their math lessons. Heidi got busy fiddling with the strings of lightbulbs on the wall. And Puck decided it would be a funny joke to turn out the lights while she was working on it. That’s when Hans decided to return from his meeting. Heidi saw him through the window of the door, walking down the hall towards the classroom.

“MY DAD’S COMING! HIDE! HIDE! TELL HIM I’M NOT HERE!”

“AAAAH!” Puck screeched. “I’M NOT HERE EITHER!”

Heidi dove under Hans’ desk with her math book. Puck took his and ate bean bag chair on the other side of the bookshelves. But there was no hiding that level of chaos. “Discrete” is not a word these 4th graders understand.