Saturday Morning Fun

“Miss! We come to play!” I’d been sleeping, soundly, unconsciously revelling at Saturday morning’s allowing me to sleep late and still had another hour or so left of good sleep in me when they woke me up. I considered shooing them away, but I stumbled out of bed, shuffled to the door, looking like a swamp thing as Brendon, Savio, Jason, Ronson, Karolinie, Shannon and Tnecha marched into the house, full of energy and ideas. Karolinie remarked at my sink of dirty dishes and says “We will wash!” Ok, sure!

The boys putter around the front room as I finally decide I should brush my teeth and wash my face and feed the dog. They discover the little kaleidoscope I have laying around that Tricia and Amanda sent and look into it. “Is just like looking at birds!” one exclaims, referring to binocs – they’d just come from bird-watching with Matt that morning. He and they had gotten up at 6 a.m. to check out the local birds, no way in hell I was gonna wake up to go with them. They look at me through the kaleidoscope and I ask what kind of bird I’d be. “A pigeon,” was the first answer one of them said. Shannon quickly corrects and says “blue backed mannikan,” a bird they’d seen that morning, which I appreciated a little more.

Since Karolinie did dishes, she got to pick the first game and she chose Down by the Banks, the hand slapping game I taught them. Then Tnecha chose to sing “Down by the Bay” and I had them make up their own rhyme for the end. The best one was Brendon’s who said “Have you ever seen a Matt, sitting on a mattress?” (Matt had come back to the house and joined in on some games, then tried to retire to a hammock for a nap, to no avail). Then we play Purple Chicken, a rhythm calling game, first with numbers, then with animal sounds. You have a number or sound and you call to someone else “Number 3, number 7,” then they call themselves then someone new, in rhythm. With the animal sounds, it went “AaaawwWW, Owuuuuu! Owuuuuuu, Onnnnnng!” (macaw to wolf to baby caiman).

Then, they wanted to play cards, though not all of them; two played dominoes of some sort, some played Phase 10 with me and some wanted to draw. Those guys drew copies of Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes) – Ronson gave Calvin big muscles, though – and Savio asked me how to spell “KARaty” and I couldn’t figure out what he meant until Ronson explained “Like Kung Fu, Miss.” “OH! KarATE, KarATE. K-A-R-A-T-E.” He wrote that on his drawing of some posing, muscly man. Shannon and Brendon really enjoyed Phase 10, we did two phases successfully before we stopped.

They ask me about different groceries of mine and where ‘I does get dem,’ particularly about one unlabelled jar of something Julie had left behind from Surama. Karolinie had discovered an empty jar of peanut butter I was throwing away and decided to rescue and finger out the remains. She licked at it as I explained the jar was a sugar pepper sauce and let them try it which they started to gobble up and asked to eat with farine. I said they could eat it with some popcorn – I’d make some if they would start to read a story together.

The kids go back into the front room while Shannon starts reading, with great pronunciation and inflecion, The Land before Time to the rest (Conrad had joined in by now, Jason and Ronson had left) as I made myself coffee and popcorn for them. Brendon and Savio had one bowl of popcorn in one hammock, Tnecha and Karolinie had another bowl in the other hammock and Shannon and Conrad had a third in a chair at the desk. They dipped the kernels in pepper sauce from a spoon. “You will eat some?” Shannon, who saw I put aside none for myself, asked. “I will share from you all,” and I took a handful from all bowls, while asking them about the story so far; they had read almost 2 chapters. That was The Movie from the boys’ and my youth and I was so excited when Uncle Steve, Jeff and Lisa sent the book to me here. I could still hear the characters’ voices as Shannon read in his Rupununi accent.

They wanted to play more, but I said they could keep reading or it was ‘go play outside’ time. Shannon, Conrad and Brendon left, with thanks all around, but Karolinie, Tnecha and Savio wanted to keep reading, so they cuddled in one hammock (a Savio Sandwich; a 6 year old squeezed between a 5th grader and an 8th grader – only in the Rupununi) as I read the rest of Chapter 2 and all of Chapter 3, about how Sharptooth was trying to ketch Littlefoot and Cera, but Littlefoot’s mother was fighting the Sharptooth; I tried to read as thrillingly as I could. After that, ‘they gan’ and I’m left, looking around in silence, at the cards strewn about, some drawings left, a drain full of clean dishes and spoons of pepper sauce left on my desk. I grin like a fool in love. Who will wake me up to chaotic fun like this when I go back to the States??