1962- thirteen skips~~~~~>>> (section seven)
<~~~~~~~~~~ EPILOGUE ~~~~~~~~~~>
The next morning was Saturday. Mom let us sleep late on Saturday, but it was usually her who would actually sleep until nine. We had cartoons to watch, and Saturday morning was when the best ones were on. It was also the only day Mom let us watch them on our little black and white receiver. But this and other family rituals we must save for another story.
When the TV was turned off at nine, Denise and I would sit down at the dining table. On days like today, when Mom had side work, usually cleaning someone’s house across town, Denise and I would have the same breakfast we had on regular school days.
Denise enjoyed Fruit Loops, sometimes two bowls. I always had Captain Crunch. Aunt Mary would make us toast spread with butter and sometimes jelly or jam, pour us some orange juice, and made sure we swallowed our vitamins.
Denise was looking intently at the back of her box of Trix Cereal when I said,” You know what?”
“Cold water’s not hot,” she said, mimicking an automatic response the family had picked up from Aunt Mary.
“No, not that,” I mused. “Remember when you said that I always have to be right, and I said that I need to be right because it’s important for me to think that I’m right?”
“Uh, yeah, kind of, but you’re right. That’s true.”
“Well, when I woke up this morning, I realized there was a time, yesterday, when I was actually wrong. Absolutely wrong, and I didn’t tell you…”
“Oh,” she said, half interested, then with rushed excitement,” It was the skips, the number of skips. It was twelve, not thirteen, right?”
“No, sorry, it was thirteen skips. I counted them, but…”
Denise looked as if she might take issue on the count again.
“When I picked up that first skipping rock, I thought it was a Trilobite.”
“So,” She said blankly, “it skipped really well anyway, didn’t it?”
I wanted to explain what I meant, how it was that I was wrong about the rock being a trilobite. How I wasn’t always right…
“I know what you’re trying to tell me, about the rock, about thinking you were wrong, ” she said. “Forget about it. That was yesterday.”
She loaded another spoonful of Fruit Loops into her mouth and went back to the study of the boxes’ back cover.
“I see,” I said. “You’re right.”
And so it seemed, and she has almost always been right since, and even more so now, fifty-five years later.
return to first chapter~~~~~>
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The object of the Word Game is to find each letter of the word “Surprise” in the same sequence that the word is spelled. Each player has to find their own letters independently, from any source outside of the car. Players can not claim letters from the same source as other players. The person who spells the word by finding the letters in sequence wins the game and gets to pick the word for the next round.
-dp-
11-20-25/12-11-25
wc-441
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