Squash the Bugs

Tuesday evening, Collette and Linnea took a walk through the neighborhood and over to the mall under towering mounds of pink-orange thunderheads over wet pavement. Then Linnea worked a bag of coffee grounds into the flower bed, coffee grounds which Rose had saved for Collette from the coffeehouse she had visited Sunday evening. Afterwards, she joined OLeif on a tour of work and a visit to the store for Junior Scrabble Cheeze-Its and a giant Hershey’s chocolate bar for Linnea.
Collette woke up that Wednesday morning to the usual Classical radio announcer who was relating irrelevant, yet interesting, information. It was Vincent Price’s birthday that day, born in St. Louis, 1911 (just like Great-Grandma Jewel). And his nickname had been Binky Price.
“I know this because he used to be one of my grandmother’s playmates,” the radio announcer said. “Small world.”
It was. Especially for people in St. Louis, who seemed to stay around for generations.
Over at the house, Joe came barreling up the stairs making noises like a giant gorilla and came over to tickle Puck, who was in the middle of his Wednesday morning sitting practice.
When Francis returned with Mom and Carrie from the Bing Shop, he immediately began drilling the trees with air-soft pellets.
“Francis,” said Collette, “some day when archaeologists dig up our yard and they find billions of plastic pellets… they’ll wonder what they were for…”
“Heh, yeah…” Francis grinned.
Meanwhile, Puck had torn a page out of Dad’s old college “Calculus and Analytic Geometry” textbook.
Then he gorged himself on giant strawberries until cheeseburgers and curly fries were ready from the grill.
The UPS man brought the airplane building tools that afternoon.
And later, because Puck had decided not to nap, Carrie told him that he couldn’t go outside. So Puck came out very seriously from his napping room (a.k.a. Rose’s room) and said:
“No birds. No grass. No trees. No friends.”
Later, he entertained himself with a world of cars and trains in the kitchen.
“Squash the bugs,” he said. “I see a bug.”
“Where?” Carrie asked.
“Right there. Right there.”
“Hmmm… I don’t see a bug,” she replied. “But if you see a bug, you squash it. Squash it with you finger. Oh, there’s one!”
“Squash! Squash!”
“Oh, almost. Try again!”
“Squash! Squash! Squash!”
“There, you did it! Good job!”