The Unfortunate Spot

Back to back basketball. Grandma Combs was over for the day at the house. Joe was at Grenada from nine to five. Rose was also at work.

Puck began the first part of his day singing out random exclamations from his crib – for a solid forty-five minutes. Sometimes he enjoyed starting his mornings with a long discussion with himself. After breakfast, he proceeded to push his musical turtle off his walker, over and over, until Collette grew tired of the pastime. Baby games were not always very amusing. But when the baby made super faces, who could complain?

After Linnea’s game (which Collette heard was a rather big loss), Grandma Combs arrived, bringing, as always, treats for the animals.

Frances’ game: the gym was already warm and muggy from the other half-thousand games that had been held there that day. Collette and Carrie-Bri took a seat on the lower bleachers, while Dad, Mom, Grandma, OLeif, Puck, and Linnea sat further up. When Frances was called into the game after about six minutes of play, the girls soon noticed an unfortunate spot on the lower back of his jersey.

“Oh no!” Carrie laughed.

Frances was obviously completely unaware of whatever it was that had created the spot.

“Did he sit in something?” Collette choked.

The girls tried to control the laughing.

“Come on, buddy, run around, dry it out.”

Thankfully, by the second half of the game, the wet spot had disappeared.

The game was lost. Collette, as usual, remembered all too late, that sports were not a good thing for her to watch. She occasionally had to ban herself from watching certain games during the Olympics. It made her too angry. She quickly began to lost count of how many times she booed the other team and how many times she found herself saying:

“Oh, come on!”

When a little devil kid from the visiting team elbowed a member of Frances’ team in the gut, seconds before the last buzzer, she decided that she officially did not like the other team. Carrie and OLeif, however, liked one of the small imps from the visiting team, who was apparently very fast and made good passes, etc. But Collette naturally thought he had an attitude. She couldn’t handle the competition of watching sports. And, sadly, Frances’ team lost that evening, as well. But it was a good game.

As for the earlier part of her day, Collette had spent most of it sneezing.