What Sugar Will Do

When I picked Puck up from a birthday party in Chesterfield at three o’clock that afternoon, he returned with party favors, including a rubber crocodile that would expand to 600% its original size in water. He was also hopped up on the sugars. I looked back in my rearview mirror where he sat with Yali, already working on a blueberry ring pop before I had the common sense to halt the candy inhalation.

“Mom, I never had more sugar in my LIFE!”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, and I had all kinds of soda, too!”

“Hmm. What kind?”

“I made a mixture of all of them! Every single soda! It was SO GOOD! Even Dr. Pepper!”

“You’re not supposed to have caffeine, bud.”

Never mind the sugar.

“But no one was there to tell me not to, Mom. I had to take the opportunity of it.”

As we wound our way through the woods and farms of millionaires, Puck added a postscript to his experience at the Incredible Pizza Company birthday party.

“I could run at the speed of light, I had so much sugar! That’s what I’ll do for the biathlon next time! I’ll just have a ring pop before I do it!”

We had basically just enough time to catch a dinner of beef and sweet potatoes at the Silverspoon’s that evening, about the same hour Izzy walked out the door to a wedding. But prior to the meal there was still enough time for a minor natural disaster.

“MOM! THE TOILET FLOODED!”

Our basement had already flooded early that morning from the heavy rain. As I went up and down the stairs to do the laundry, it was like walking through soup. But as long as the rain was accompanied by loud crashes of thunder and lightning – which it was – I certainly wasn’t complaining.

This flooding was of a different nature.

“I just kept pressing the handle on the toilet. I thought that would stop it,” Puck explained as I hurried down to the basement to inspect.

As I opened the door wide to the flooded bathroom tile – you could sail a small boat on those waters – I had to ask Puck why soap bubbles were floating on the surface. The answer was only too obvious.

“I wanted to see if I could fill the whole bathroom with bubbles.”