Youth en Masse
Friends were already pestering Puck to play during Science that morning. He again politely declined and returned to sit next to me on the couch where we were discussing fish ponds and their occasional lack of oxygen.
“If a pond is eight feet or deeper, it helps the oxygen supply,” I explained to him.
Puck’s first thought was, “Mom, how tall am I? PLEASE tell me I’m nine feet.”
When I explained fluid in the inner ear to him during our next topic, he stared wide-eyed into space.
“I think I might faint.”
Anyway, during most of Quiet Hour, Puck entertained himself in a huge way with that little green paper-covered kaleidoscope, constantly calling out to me to, “Come here, Mom! This is an AMAZING ONE!… Oh. My. Hat… WOW!”
Quiet Hour ended on time. Probably too soon for my taste though. For some reason, our house is a magnet for these neighbor kids. Not that they’re bad kids or anything. But the sheer amount of BO these young boys are capable of producing, is amazing. After awhile, I sent the five of them (girls included) back out into the street with bikes and rollerblades. Hunted up some long-expired body spray (lemon, I think). It reeked on about the same level of strength, but at least not the same intensity of foulness.
For about half an hour, I was safe. They were all out there doing their thing. Even pushed over handfuls of sour bomb pops, just to appease the masses. But then … they all came back. This time, there were six.
I was already frustrated because the big news of the afternoon had sent Yadi to the disabled list for up to 12 weeks. So while I processed that disappointing information, Rosie was smashing the Chinese gong, while Anna yelled at her for being too loud, then ran back to Puck’s room to pull out two containers of green oobleck which she and Anna somehow managed to drizzled all over the kitchen linoleum after Puck got upset with Rosie because she was running around with his Mario 64 (or whatever) talking like – and pretending – to be a baby. Rosie may or may not have been wearing rollerblades at this time. The boys were in the basement, at least, yelling and laughing over the iPad because the Nintendo (or whatever) wasn’t working, and Lord knows I don’t have the patience to figure that one out.
I think somewhere towards the end of these two hours – I sent them all home – I texted El Oso something like, “Thank God I don’t babysit for a living.”
As I read the nightly Bible story to Puck, which referenced God never leaving his children, Puck added his two cents for me, “Well, He can’t go away from us anyway. Because there’s no place else to go anyways. There are basically only free fings (three things) that live in the world. Space, hell, Earf, and Heaven. He doesn’t want to live on Earf because He’s probably going to blow it up in a few million years or so.”
So simple.