Late Night Antics

Since covid closed us down, we’ve been sitting  together, all five of us, for dinner.  Maci usually finds her spot at someone’s feet.  Someone, who might drop her a little bite.

Typically, it’s Megan and I for dinner Monday through Friday.  Sometimes, it’s just me.  Billy eats when he gets home from work and the kitchen is cleaned and homework is in full swing.  Grace’s appearances around the dinner table are few and far between.  Dance, work, and a very active social life keep her out and about.  And Hannah, well, she’s in college.

The other night, the dining banter was our new usual.  “How was your day at school, girls?”  Billy asked with a lot of sarcasm on the word at.  “Hannah, did you go to lab today?”  All three girls obliged Billy with half hearted answers.  We ate.  We chatted.  There were pickles on the table and Billy pulled out a question he used to ask when they were little, “So girls, if you were stranded on a pickle ship, a pickle ship with hundreds of thousand jars of pickles, would you survive?”  When they were little, no one really answered the question (or researched it), we just laughed and wondered.  But the other night, Grace answered, “No, you wouldn’t survive, your cells would be hypertonic.”  I had no idea if that is true or not, but jeez, it sounded pretty good.

The meal was consumed, forks were dirty and done.  “What were you guys doing last night?”  Megan asked Hannah and Grace.  From my seat at the end of the table, I saw Grace look right at Hannah and smile. “Oh, yeah!  Grace said “I was in my bed on my phone and reading and dropped my phone. Hannah texted ‘Yo, you ok over there?‘ The two of them, sitting across from each other were about to laugh uncontrollably.  “I texted back, ‘yeah‘.  Then 10 minutes later, I heard a big thud over in Hannah’s room, so I texted her “Yo…YOU ok over there?”  Hannah chimed in “and I texted her back, ‘yeah, I just dropped MY phone and hey, can come and turn off my lights.”  “Really?”  I blurted out in complete disbelief.  “This is what happens after we go to bed?” The two of them looked at each other, still laughing, celebrating their late night antics.

We cleaned up the kitchen, the shared laughter lingering in my mind.  I just shook my head at the absurdity of the two of them texting each other from their bedrooms after hours.