Tiny Tim, Dreadlocks, & Rosaries
It was over at the house that Frances was already up to mischief:
“This is Rose’s mouth,” he said, opening and closing the spout of the tea kettle.
Rose, oblivious to this comment, did not feel the need to chase him around the house, and retired to her room with a box of Bavarian pretzels. Somehow Collette got the idea that she wasn’t studying for her Introduction to Educational Psychology exam.
Meanwhile, Collette was eating candy corn and peanuts from Mom’s traditional glass pumpkin, which she kept trying to push away from herself while reprimanding Frances for doing his algebra lesson with a red Sharpie.
“Collette,” Frances asked, “Can you think of any explosive things I can use in my potato gun? I’m trying this first.”
He held up a can of WD-40.
“No, Frances, absolutely not,” Dad told him from the other room.
Then Frances ran off to find Mom to see if she would buy him a full aerosol can of hairspray, which he deemed to be highly explosive. He and Linnea were busy on the driveway – Linnea, scraping out the cracks between the pavement, and Frances, constructing his various-sized potato guns. The larger one read, in red Sharpie:
“Little Tom”.
“I’m waiting for Dad to take me to Home Depot so I can build Big Tom,” he said.
“He’s building Tiny Tim too,” said Linnea, busy scrubbing out a large crack with a stick.
There sat Tiny Tim on the front lawn, poised toward the skies for launching.
“The neighbors are going to be sorry,” Frances said, trying not to giggle.
Collette brought in the mail while Puck napped. A packaged cheap metal and plastic rosary was among its contents.
“Ooooh! Give it to me!” Said Linnea.
Inside, Rose fought her for it. Then Rose decided she didn’t need it after all.
“How does it work?” Linnea asked her.
“Put it around your neck and say, ‘Rosary, rosary, rosary’.”
Linnea did so and laughed.
Carrie was in the bathroom with one dreadlock just dyed red. She sat on the sink tightly winding it with thread.
“This is so they stop making friends,” she pointed to her several hopelessly unbrush-able dreadlocks.
Meanwhile, Dad had a contract offer in Ladue. Puck had found his thumb, which he seemed to enjoy very much. And Rose had carted out piles and boxes of old photographs to select a few for her yearbook pages. Collette and Carrie also hunted through the mounds.
“Hey, what’s happening in this picture?” Carrie held one up for Rose.
Rose wrinkled her face at her.
“That’s you squishing me like you always do.”
Off to Trader Joe’s while Rose gave Puck his bottle at home. OLeif had requested granola cereal, banana chips, Mandarin orange chicken, and a bottle of red wine.
“Shall I recommend a shade?” Carrie asked.
After walking the wine aisle, however, they ended up picking out the bottle because it had a label of a red flying saucer on the front.
After a drop by Walgreens for three king-sized Reeses peanut butter cups and a box of hair dye for Carrie, they returned to their respective projects of the evening, Puck’s namely being continuing to suck on his thumb.