The Last Summer

It all started with trash dumpster neglect. While Genius snoozed his life away after an evening of carousing at a party for a recent Missouri S&T graduate, a Harvard man, several future engineers, a few county-wide valedictorians, and the son of a furniture czar...The Pony was called upon to rush the dumpster to the end of the driveway in an effort to catch the Waste Management truck on its way out of our little Backroads compound.

The minute he saw through his front bedroom window that the deed was done, Genius arose from his slumber and began his shenanigans. "Whew! I looked out my window and said, 'YES!'" He rolled his sheet-wrinkled body over the back of the couch. "Now I need a nap!"

"This is no napping matter. It costs me $15 dollars for nothing every week you forget to take up the trash." I slashed at him with a pointy mom-fingernail. "Get up. I'll fang you."

"That's not a fang. It's not in your mouth."

"I'll show you a fang! How do you like that?"

"STOP!" He tried to fend off my fingernails by flailing his palms in a girlish manner. So much for morning naptime. He jumped off the couch and started pacing. Mostly in front of the mirror.

"You're parading like that last turkey in front of the truck bumper, admiring yourself. You're going to wear a path in the carpet in your baby blue boxer briefs."

"It's cornflower blue."

"Oooh! Let me take notes. 'It's cornflower blue.'"

"He exclaimed."

"No. We should show, not tell."

"He exclaimed! Write it!"

"'...he exclaimed, indignantly.' Might as well throw in an unnecessary adverb. This could SO be a blog post."

"Don't write about that."

"You don't want me to?"

"No, do it. It will feed my narcissism."

"Stop! I can't keep up."

"Are you telling me not to be so quotable? Because you kept saying 'stop' as I was being so quotable. Fine. Write it. Make it hilarious."

"They usually write themselves."

"Why don't you turn this into a mommy blog so you can write about me all the time?"

"I already write about you all the time. I have to apologize for making it a mommy blog. I'll put it on my other blog."

"NO! Nobody reads that one."

"Yes they do. The same amount of people read it, according to the stats. They just don't comment."

"You put it on THE GOOD ONE! Not the other one."

"We'll see. What did you do last night that was interesting, at the most nerdy party ever thrown for a college graduate? Did you all gather around the piano and sing college fight songs? Because when that kid came out here last time, you guys were standing around the piano singing."

"No. We were roaming the streets like a street gang. The nerdiest street gang ever. Talking about how we were the nerdiest street gang ever."

"Did dogs bark at you?"

"Yes. C-man got in a shouting match with a duck. It was sounding the alarm that we were there. He started yelling at it in duck."

"That's kind of nerdy."

"Back at the house, we played Bananagrams, Super Smash Brothers on Wii, chess, Balderdash, Risk, and sat around the table outside talking about matrices, integrals, and other simple math until they got too advanced for me. Then we walked the path around the lake, and that was it."

"Did you have nerdy refreshments?"

"Yes. We had lemonade and tea and water, ooey gooey butter cookies, chunks of watermelon, Cheez-Its, and round Ritz oval crackers, brownies..."

"Slow down. I can't type that fast! Hey! I just hit T instead of R."

"...TITZ. Heh, heh."

"You don't have to say it out loud. I fixed it."

 "And pizza. We had six pizzas. At the time, only six of us were there. Harvard Man went into the kitchen and saw them, and hollered, 'We got SIX pizzas! We all got a pizza!' It reminded me of that scene in The Hunger Games where Katniss gives Rue the groosling leg, and Rue says, 'I've never had a whole one to myself before!'"

"Huh. Harvard Man is a college student. He knows the value of a pizza. You'll find out soon enough when Mommy isn't paying."

"Turn this into a mommy blog."

Funny how that conversation went full circle.