You Can't Always Avoid It

On another rainy morning, I woke up with a head cold. Hadn’t had one of those in some time.

The boys were sitting at breakfast discussing Minecraft for the upcoming weekend already.

“So what do you want to build after Ethiopia?” Bær asked.

Puck had a list in mind…

“The Pyramids… and St. Louis… and Mexico and Canada.”

Someone had been listening to his geography class.

As Bær left for work, Puck sat with his little buddy…

“Hooray for Crackers,” he said proudly. “That was a long meow.”

I made a pan of mild chili for lunch. Seemed appropriate considering the weather, the season, and my current watering eyes. Puck complained of course: because of the beans. But he ate.

As we sat, Puck had questions…

“Would you tell me about your life, Mom? How did you live back then before there was Minecraft and stuff?”

I guess first I had a little thing called “no computer”, and then about five years after that, a little ditty known as “Oregon Trail”. I was always the one who died of typhus.

Going into the afternoon, Puck tried to make chocolate milk, but we had no chocolate syrup. So he substituted first with a crunched up party-sized Kit-Kat bar [leftovers], then with lemon extract. I guess the poor kid is deprived.

During the afternoon the rain had cleared, and we read books together on the couch. Puck was watching my neck…

“But. Here’s a question, Mom. You know how food goes down the neck? How would you connect the blood wires to the rest of your body from the head to the brain, because all the food’s going down the neck?”

We discussed.

When his neighborhood pals hopped off the bus later in that mild afternoon, Puck ran out to wait for them to emerge from their house. He waited about twenty minutes and then returned for a break to read more.

“Why is it taking them so long, Mom?”

“I’m not sure, bud. They probably have homework though.”

Puck considered a more likely idea…

“Maybe they both knocked over their dressers.”

“That is always a possibility.”