Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay
“This is all your fault, Robert!”
“So, explain this to me like I'm my grandson, Lil' Robert, who is five: it's my fault that my cousin 15 times removed took a reputation that was good for fried chicken and wrecked it in a single day trying to steal someone else's brand thunder?”
“You know,” seven-year-old Amanda Ludlow said to eight-year-old best friend Gracie Trent, “I think that all this is happening part so that Edwina could get life-changing levels of laughter in her life!”
“Ain't it the truth,” Gracie said as they listened to eight-year-old Edwina laughing with abandon at Capt. R.E. Ludlow calmly wrecking another phone opponent.
“Yes, that is one of your little cousins 17 times removed laughing at you in the background, and I will be joining her after this call, or during, depending on how ridiculous you get.”
“Your grandfather really has changed,” Gracie said.
“Yes, he really has,” Amanda said. “I'm still not sure the other person on the other end of the phone is totally safe, but safer is good too!”
“But I don't know if the world can be made safe for people acting a fool,” Gracie said. “It's like Milton, getting ready to base jump off my roof right now, not knowing that Dad and Pop-Pop are already up there waiting on him.”
“Safer, but in terms of self-breakage baddage and groundage, not safe,” Amanda said.
“Right, because he is not going to get hurt or die, but his weekend is about to be totally ruined,” Gracie said. “I tried to tell him, but because Dad and Pop-Pop are in a good mood today, he thinks he can do more than George can, because clearly, your grandfather is not having any more foolery today.”
“I'm just trying to figure out how cousins 15 times removed are supposed to be calling here blaming us for stuff,” Amanda said. “We don't know them!”
“All I'm saying is, it doesn't even matter,” Gracie said. “In the Trent family, it doesn't matter how closely related you are: if you don't get it, we forget you, because chances are you're going to die or be in jail anyway, and we're not going with you.”
“Yep,” Amanda said. “Your folks are right. This is why Papa and Grandma have us.”
She started crying.
“We got forgotten, but we stayed and they went, and now we gotta hold on together and let go of the past!” she said as Gracie gathered her up.
“You snugglecourage everybody,” Gracie said. “It's your turn, Mandie. It's not easy. I got a bunch of gone uncles like you have gone parents, but we got each other. It's your turn to be snugglecouraged.”
The two girls hugged and snuggled as the sun came out to kiss them both and cheer them up, and … .
“Yeah, no,” nine-year-old Milton said as he looked at the ladder to the roof. “I haven't seen Dad and Pop-Pop for a minute, and I bet I know where they are. Nope. I'm not supposed to be doing this anyway. Nope. I'm good.”
“Good thinking, Milton!” Sgt. Vincent Trent said as he walked to the edge of the roof.
“That's my other smart nine-year-old grandson – no self-breakage baddage for you!” Mr. Thomas Stepforth said as he also grinned down.
“Right now, we're not even going to get into the fact that you can't base jump from just 20 feet, and from no height with just bedsheets – go put them back on your bed and make it up, and we'll talk about parachuting later,” Sgt. Trent said, and Milton, greatly relieved and with his weekend preserved, obeyed.
Meanwhile, the Slocum cousin 15 times removed had to stop cussing Capt. R.E. Ludlow out, because he could not even hear himself think after meeting the mighty wave of the combined basso profundo laughter of the grandfather and the contralto laughter of the granddaughter.
“You know,” ten-year-old Andrew Ludlow said to his big sister eleven-year-old Eleanor, “Papa and Edwina have changed, but I think people would have found it easier to get yelled at than laughed at. I mean, sheesh! Papa is loud and deep, and then there's Edwina who is loud and taking up all the other notes! That's a whole choir laughing at you in just two people! Can you imagine being on the other side of that phone?”
“But that's the thing,” Eleanor said. “What does Grandma always say when she talks to our step-up uncles and aunts and cousins in San Francisco?”
Andrew thought about this, and then shook his head.
“You can choose your sins, but you can't choose your consequences,” he said.
“So, when the self-breakage baddage ends up with you meeting the end-of-the-world earthquake laughterage in five or six octaves – yes, laughterage, because other people just laugh at folks. But Papa? With a reputation like he has in Lofton County? Old 'Hell to Pay' Ludlow – and him and Edwina 'Breaking Bad' Ludlow together? That's a whole different level of devastation nobody had to call and experience, but when you choose the foolery, that's on you!” Eleanor said. “I'm gonna do this like Edwina and clap with each word: THAT'S. ON. YOU!”
