Shows of Talent
It was a double golden birthday. Monday and Blessing were both 24.
It was the not-so-great Sunday. Somehow, they almost always managed to stick Collette in the nursery on a communion Sunday. Despite the fact that she was a mom, there was something incredibly boring about sitting on a cold floor for an hour and forty-five minutes, watching two year-olds play. She arrived late, however, and stayed for one hour and thirty-five minutes instead. She was joined by several others, including half the Coca-Cola family.
Afterward, skipping the congregational meeting, which was sure to be another yawn-fest, they drove over to the Silverspoon’s for roast.
“If you eat one of these after a radish,” Curly was saying, holding a celery stick, “it leaves a little bit of a minty flavor.”
“If you eat chocolate before you brush your teeth, it tastes really minty,” said Izzy.
“Well,” said OLeif, “if you eat these chips with this salsa, it tastes really good.”
“If you taste my fist at high speeds, it’s gonna hurt,” Curly laughed.
Then Theodore and OLeif talked about the marijuana fields in Arkansas.
“They throw camouflage tarps over it so that pilots can’t see them from the sky,” Theodore was saying.
That was the backwoods.
Then OLeif read the funnies while some of them watched the “Even Stevens” movie and the Puck dug through his toy box.
Collette was in a dull mood, maybe a little gloom too. She was thankful, at least, that the weather was gray and somewhat snowy. A sunny day would have made it worse.
By the time that late afternoon had rolled around, Denae took over with the Puck, while OLeif and Collette joined most of the church, participating in the now-annual youth talent show mission trip fundraiser. Similar to the year before, the show involved the funny and the not-so-funny acts. Probably the best act of the evening was all four Pie kids as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: Cherry on guitar, Amelia with a top hat and a clothespin on her nose, Eustache with orange hair, sunglasses, and a large broken red heart, and little Juliet with sunglasses, a hammer, and audience-participation induced clapping.
In the end, it was good to play again. Collette hadn’t performed in seven years. And the dancers made it through their entire dance with no mistakes, from what Collette could tell.
Conversation around Super Smoker’s pork and apple pie with OLeif, Louis, Caligula and Mercy, and Carrie-Bri: fencing, book clubs, mixing lemonade and coffee in Caligula’s drink, the old days…
And for the rest of the acts, dancing chickens, rainbow bears, hillbilly pastors, etc. It was an interesting night. Then home for a good night’s sleep to prepare for other business that week.