Life With Boys

Life with the Beck family … life on Lucky John Drive was always in motion … people in and out … projects in process … critters underfoot …. which was the case one June afternoon when 20 girl scouts and their parents were due to descend for the end-of-the-year court of awards …

While preparing for the guests, my mom had made a pickle-in-the-middle sandwich, created with an entire loaf of French bread … it was ready in the fridge, just waiting to be sliced …

Unfortunately, on one of her passes through the kitchen, she noticed the usually obnoxiously noisy guinea pig had gone silent … upon closer inspection, she realized Chumlee was no longer with us … she didn’t want to leave the guinea pig corpse there for the scouts to discover so she gently wrapped up the beloved pet in a dish towel, put it in a plastic bag and for lack of a better idea, she put it into the fridge … On her next trip to the garage, she quietly pulled one of my dad’s construction crew over, asking him to use his discretion to please bury the bundle in the refrigerator in the backyard …

Life went on, and the patches and awards were presented. It was finally time for snacks … back to the kitchen, she went… grabbed her sandwich loaf … only to discover it was not her sandwich loaf …

Needless to say … we had two funerals that day … and no one enjoyed the sandwich …