Our House
It’s Sunday morning. Mike and I have just returned from the Romulus House Restaurant, where they make the most delicious scrambled eggs with feta, and fresh, homemade fried potatoes. Yum.
We are relaxing on the couch, trying to muster up the energy to dress up and head out to the Renaissance Festival. I am reading, Mike is looking out the window. He motions for me to look, as Ryder, age 5-ish (from C’mon Ryder, the Beer’s getting warm, fame) and his slightly older sister age 7-ish come four-wheeling over the neighbor’s lawn with their little electric powered jeep.
They are nearly around the block from their house, and no grown up is anywhere to be seen.
We had noticed them in the street riding the jeep in front of their own house, maybe 15 minutes earlier as we returned home from breakfast. Usually I am the one worrying about the neighbor kids and being nosey, I mean, concerned about what’s happening on our street.
Today, Mike hops up from the couch and goes to the window, I wonder whether he is going to tell the kids to go home, since they are unsupervised, and we know they have a habit of riding right out into the street, but I just keep on peacefully reading, absorbed in my story of Ordinary Love and Good Will by Jane Smiley.
Suddenly Mike, bursts out with, “Did you see that! Sherrie! Did you see that?”
I didn’t see. I was reading, of course.
The sister apparently in an attempt to convince Ryder, the driver of the Jeep, to turn around and head home, decided to use brute force to get her message across. She grabbed him by the hair, jerked his head back and slapped him upside the head three times in quick succession.
By now, Mike has my attention. I stand up and look out just in time to see the sister, climb over Ryder and push him into the passenger seat, take the wheel and whip that jeep around in a 180* move heading them towards home, going all-terrain over the neighbor’s lawn again.
This excitement, was just what we needed to get us moving off the couch and out of the house. We quickly dressed in our costumes and headed off to the Renaissance Festival for a less violent afternoon of entertainment.
