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 Posted: Sun Jul 19, 2009 8:10 pm
"You never know. It's a fun time getting to learn how to build things and be more independent, so maybe that's something to look into. Let's see, what would they be? Cub scouts? I haven't been in the know about that for a while. " Reuben replied. He was sure that Vergil would also benefit from working more in a group and learning to take other people more into consideration. His kid wasn't selfish persay, but he did tend to wind up in trouble for not thinking his actions through all the time.
Vergil looked at the knot and showed Stas his own knotted string. "Yeah! I want to know, too! Then I'll be able get those shoes that come with strings." He had really wanted to try those out because he'd found a pair that lit up and flashed different colored when you took a step. If he could learn to tie shoes, maybe he could convince his Dad to let him get the cool flashy ones. "Do you think your Dad could teach us?" He whispered, not wanting Mrs. Pemberley to hear him as she started to explain the next step.
"Alright, now that everyone has knots in their string, we'll move to the next part. Becky will come around and pass out noodles for you to put onto your string. Don't eat the noodles on the plate because we're using those for your necklaces." She demonstrated putting a piece of pasta on her necklace. "Sometimes it helps if you lick the end of your string before putting a noodle on it. If you need help, raise your hand and Becky and I will come around."
Becky smiled once more and placed a plate of pasta down on the red table.
"Wow," Vergil breathed, as though this were a very special type of noodle.
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Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 2:55 pm
"My parents never sent me to scouts. I'd watch them when I was little though." Lily admitted nervously. His parents were the stereotypical Asian parents who wanted school and education to be the highest priority in his life. They never bothered with anything like Cadets or Scouts. "I hope both of them can be independent in the future." Lily said with a lack of thought behind his answer. "Maybe not now or tomorrow, but one day, I want to be able to send Stas off without any worries." he made himself tear up a bit.
Stas chuckled at his friend's eagerness too. "I don't wear shoes with the strings. I have stickys." He said as he pointed to his shoes that were done up with Velcro instead of shoelaces. "I could ask my dad if he could help us." He said as he copied Vergil's volume of voice in case he got caught talking as well. Even through his whispering, he listened to the instructions attentively. He watched as the lady that helped them with the knot tying placed a plate of pasta down on their table. He had never made anything like this before and didn't want to do it wrong. So he turned back up to the talking lady; Mrs. Pemberley.
Stas stared at the older lady putting the pasta on her string. He looked back at his string, then to the pasta, then to the lady again. He stared at it as Vergil did as well, but with much more expression. "They don't look like pasta dad makes." He said softly to Vergil. "Dad's are all soft" He said with a distressed sort of look on his face.
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Posted: Tue Jul 21, 2009 4:40 pm
"Mine only did after I practically begged them," Reuben replied, wincing. His parents had been tight on money for extracurricular activities, since they'd been trying to pay his tuition at the same time. "My brother went, so I wanted to go; it was that sort of sibling rivalry thing."
"Me, too." He wanted Vergil to retain his creative spirit, just to rein in his impulsiveness. The kid needed to be able to think things through, not rush in and make decisions that he'd regret later. Reuben certainly had had his fill of that. "I think it'll happen some day." He did a double-take when he saw Lily's face--was that a...?--no, surely not.
"Stickies are fun!" Vergil replied. "But I like to sneak up on my Dad and I can't do that unless I'm wearing shoes with strings." He nodded, as though divulging some great secret.
Vergil poked tentatively at the pasta as well. "Hmmm." After giving the pasta a careful examination, he was forced to conclude the same thing. "They're all weird and hard!"
His hand shot into the air, and before even being called on, he spoke, voice strong and clear as though exposing a serious problem. "Mrs. Pemberley, why're the noodles so hard?"
Mrs. Pemberley, who had been involved with helping a few stragglers get their strings tied, looked up, and announced to the class (with a slight raised brow to Reuben) that the pasta was uncooked and that, because they were using it for their special project, that they weren't supposed to eat it.
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Posted: Wed Jul 22, 2009 1:55 pm
"If you learned something useful from it, it's not a waste, I guess." He said, trying to comfort Reuben. "How was your brother at scouts? Was he an epic one?" He said with a chuckle. He didn't know the ranks from cubs to whatever the highest rank was.
"We'll have to be the best dads so that they'll never leave us!" He felt more like a mom than a dad. He knew his mom was always one to get him into the habit of telling him things and never letting anything get by her, whether it was something as large as breaking a window to something small like spilling a drop of soup on the kitchen tiles. "When that day comes, we'll be ready." He said as he smiled to himself and rubbed his eyes with his arm.
"Stickies don't make too much noise." He said as he thought back to walking with his dad to the bus stop. "I can't sneak up on my dad. He says I'm no good at it." He said as his spiky ears sort of drooped sadly. "You ave to teach me your sneaky ways so I can be better!" He said enthusiastically. He seemed to have a lot of energy in him today. But Lily knew that the second they got home, he'd plop over on the bed and fall right asleep even before dinner, showering or even taking his socks off.
Stas giggled a bit as Vergil sounded so serious while he spoke about the noodles. "They don't look too yummy." Stas said as he poked the noodles with a pale hand. "But they are for making necklaces. So that's okay." He said, speaking more to himself than the ones around him. He looked around the classroom to see whether or not others were stringing pasta into their string yet. He didn't want his unofficial first day at Sunny-side Up to be a disaster.
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Posted: Wed Jul 22, 2009 3:51 pm
Reuben cocked his head and considered this thoughtfully. "He was alright, I guess. He seemed to really like the pinewood derby parts of it, since he's a car fanatic." He shrugged. "I was the one that tried to collect all the bagdges," he admitted, a smile forming about his lips.
Laughing heartily, Reuben couldn't help himself. "Oh, I don't know about that. I have a feeling that Verge is going to start eating me out of house and home when he gets old enough. I'll always have a place for him, but it'll be good for him to get a chance to go out there and experience the world when he's ready for it." He finished. Noting Lily's peculiar actions, he chided himself for not thinking of it sooner. Of course, with all the leaves on the trees, naturally allergies would be cropping up. He looked around for the tissue box.
Vergil brightened. "Sure! We can pretend we're ninjas in a castle, and train ourselves to be the best and sneakiest ever!" Vergil was thrilled. Not only did he have big plans for sneaking up on Reuben, but he and Stas would get to play together more, which was always fun.
Eyes concentrating on his task, Vergil carefully added noodle after noodle to his necklace. The others around the room seemed to be slowly adding noodles, and every once in a while someone would raise their hand, either with a question about the process or a plea for someone to wet their string and help them. Mark was giving his string a quizzical look, and then tried sticking the entire thing in his mouth for best effect. Jill seemed to be very good at stringing, and she was about a quarter of the way up her string.
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Posted: Wed Jul 22, 2009 6:18 pm
Lily was mildly amused at Reuben's childhood. "Did you ever collect all of them? There are quite a few, aren't there?" He said as he remembered watching all the boys and their badges, but enough didn't seem like enough for them. "Your brother seems like an interesting character." He said, making sure he commented on Reuben's brother as well. "Did he win any of the Derby races?" He questioned.
"well, at least he'll grow up big and tall if he eats that much, right?" Lily said as he imagined the songbird but taller and munching on everything in sight. "I guess. It'll be good for him to know your door is always open for him." Lily said with a smile. He sort of wished Stas would never leave, but from Reuben's words, it seemed as though the world was a better place for Stas. It may have been more harsh and less loving, but it was better.
Stas looked and saw Vergil trying his best to string as well as his tablemates, Jill and Mark. Stas picked up a piece of pasta and licked the end of his string. He pushed it into the hole and the string magically came out on the other side. a large smile went on his face as though he had just seen one of the world's seven wonders. He turned around quickly and showed his dad.
"Dad! Dad! Look!" He said as he held both ends of the string with the macaroni in the center of it. "It's like magic!" He said to Lily who just waved back and gave a soft smile to the little songbird.
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Posted: Wed Jul 22, 2009 6:49 pm
Reuben shook his head. "Nah, the troop I was with wasn't much for doing badge activities, and there were too many for me to do on my own." He cracked a smile. "I did try, though." Reuben shrugged. "He's pretty great. He's currently abroad, somewhere where there's good cell reception, but he's not at liberty to say. He's working for the armed forces." He added, clarifying.
"I guess so!" The man laughed, then considered. "I'll always welcome Vergil back if he wants a place, but I do want to encourage him to go and do things on his own. Hey, why are we worrying? We've got, what, how long until these two reach adulthood again?" He gibed, trying to bring some levity back to the situation. It wasn't like him to dwell on unhappy things like his kid leaving for long.
Vergil smiled at his string as he noticed Stas' success and then firmly concentrated on getting another noodle onto the string. He didn't want to lick it, so the end had become all frayed and was very difficult. He sighed, slouched back in his chair and frowned to himself as he kept trying to make the string go through the noodle.
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Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2009 11:41 am
Lily nodded. "I guess it does depend on your troop." He said. It was like art teachers. Some looked for overall performance while others looked at technique, even if your art wasn't the nicest. "I wish your brother luck then. It must be dangerous though." Lily admitted. He would've never wanted to join the armed forces. Inside, he was terrified of the adrenaline that rushed in your blood when something came up suddenly.
"I guess." Lily admitted nervously. "They're only in preschool now. There's about 14 or 15 years for them of schooling ahead of them before they're legally adults and are heading off to college or university." Lily said as he quickly did the math in his head. "That's long enough to make memories and take pictures." He said.
Stas, with only one piece of macaroni on his string, decided to hurry. He picked up more pieces and started to string. He occasionally licked it and plucked bits of string that was broken off from his mouth. He wiped his saliva covered fingers on his pants and to string. He looked at his own with now 4 pieces on his and then towards Jill and Mark. Jill seemed to be doing well with hers. He didn't know what Mark was going to do with his. Then he looked at Vergil's string with the frayed end. He looked at the other songbird with confusion. "What happened to your string?" He asked curiously.
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Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2009 7:36 pm
He nodded, lips pursing. Reuben wondered if Vergil would share his penchant for badge collecting. He was about to make a "like father, like son" comment, but the words caught on the way up his throat. "Yeah, that's true. I'll see if Verge is up for it when he gets a little older." He nodded at Lily's comment about his brother. "Thanks. He's not in a major combat zone-- it's more like helping keep peace and train locals."
"Yup! Man," Reuben sighed, "I need to get better about taking pictures. I get the feeling that everything's just going to go by so fast."
Becky meandered over to the red table, nodding and smiling at the progress that each child had made. She eventually convinced Mark to remove the string from his mouth and got him a new one. Mark looked a little sad, but once she put a few noddles on his string, he brightened considerably. Becky then snuck the soaked string from before off to a garbage can.
Verge pouted, feathers spiking up a bit in his frustration. "It got all puffy." He said, frown clearly on his lips. "It's broken."
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Posted: Sun Jul 26, 2009 8:13 pm
"I'd like Stas to be introduced to these things too. When he's older as well. Perhaps they could go together?" He asked. He didn't necessarily want the two to be too far from each other. All Stas had ever talked about was his friend Vergil. He knew it would change from his best friend Vergil to his new girlfriend, whatever-her-name-is in a matter of years. He wanted them to get tight like best friends. "That's good. Training the locals would do them well in case he and his team mates were to leave their area." Lily commented.
Lily let out a soft chuckle at Reuben's response to the photos thing. "Yea. Better to take in what you have now so that you won't not have it later, right?" Lily killed grammar. He never did good in English and barely passed it in high school.
Stas laughed as Vergil commented on his string. "It looks broken." Stas said as he looked at it from different angles. "Maybe the nice lady can help you." He said as he looked over to where Mark was to catch sight of Becky. "Maybe she can unbreak your string." He said happily.
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Posted: Mon Jul 27, 2009 8:33 pm
"Sure!" Reuben grinned. "If Stas were to do it, I'm sure Verge would go right along. He's not much of a follower usually, but he's really attached to Stas." He had a feeling that those two were going to be good friends as they grew up. His thoughts drifted once more to his brother. "Yeah, his unit tends to move from place to place a lot, so he's gotten to see a lot of the world already."
"Too true. I have this weird feeling that I didn't take enough pictures of Vergil as an egg." He shook his head. How was he supposed to know that he'd want photos of a strange gg later for posterity? Hopefully, he'd be able to make it up with a lot of kid photos.
Vergil bit his lip, his sadness at his string's problem ebbing away as his friend laughed. He really wanted to fix the string himself, but, looking around, it seemed like everyone else had tons more noodles than he did. His face wore a quizzical expression, as though he were not quite sure what to do. "Maybe I can fix it..." He said, more as a pep talk for himself, trying to put the noodle on at different angles.
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Posted: Sun Aug 02, 2009 9:05 am
"Stas is the same way." Lily said with a chuckle. "He really likes Vergil's company wherever he goes." He said nodding as he watched the little children and their difficulty with a string and some uncooked macaroni. "I might enroll him if he really wants to. I don't want to push anything onto him that he doesn't want." He said. The plan of escaping while they were distracted seemed to have flown right over their heads.
"Stas doesn't have any photos yet. I feel like he's growing up before i get a chance to even take one." He replied back. "And if Vergil doesn't have any photos as an egg, might as well take more as a toddler, no?" He said. "It won't make up for the loss of egg pictures, but as least you won't regret having too little." His tone of voice seemed to pick up in delight.
Stas laughed a little as Vergil tried to fix his unwound string. "Good luck!" He said to him as he continued to string pasta onto his string, making sure to lick it now and again, even if it meant having to pull out string bits and wiping them on the side of his pants. His string, unraveling at a speed slower than the speed of light, still unwound bit by bit with every piece of macaroni that went past it. "mine looks like it's breaking too." Stas said sadly with his ears drooping and tail sweeping the floor from his tiny chair.
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Posted: Sun Aug 02, 2009 7:22 pm
Reuben nodded along. "Yeah, I want Verge to find out what he likes for himself, not push him into things that I like either." He laughed a little. "Guess we're kind of laid-back in that respect, huh? We're both pretty cool with whatever makes our kids happy." Reuben liked that. He'd seen a lot of his students crumble on the pressure to be someone that their parents wanted them to be, and he wasn't about to wish the same fate on Vergil.
A smattering of parents remained within the classroom, slowly filing out and leaving their children for their day at schoo. Reuben's eyes flicked to his watch. Hmm. He was cutting it a little close...
Reuben couldn't help but agree with that logic. "Poor kid's gonna grow up thinking I'm photo-crazy." He joked, shaking his head. "I still have a few shards of the egg, which I'm saving for when he gets older. It's probably going to be weird finding out that he's different from most other kids, so maybe it'll help." His shoulders twitched. "He'll have a little remembrance some way then."
Vergil frowned, but knew what had to be done. He raised his hand into the air solemnly. If his own string was broken, well, that he could deal with. But if Stas' string broke, then there was a problem. Stas was his friend, and even though he hated to ask for help, Vergil wanted to make everything fun for Stas.
Mrs. Pemberley, who had been checking the tables to make sure that everyone was going through this stage without problems, saw his hand and walked over. "Why, Vergil," she said on hearing his problem, "you simply need to lick your string." Smiling and demonstrating, she handed the string back to him and he began to string on more pasta quickly, fearing that he was being left behind.
She turned to Stas, still smiling warmly. "And how are you doing, Stasio? Vergil mentioned that your string was also in need of help."
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Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2009 6:53 am
"Yea." He answered absent-mindedly. "But then comes a strict manner as well." Lily suggested. He hated being strict on kids. They always made him feel... guilty. "But it's good that we're pretty much on a similar wave length. It'd be easier to agree on ideas." He said with a soft chuckle. Lily too noticed that parents flooded out of the building one by one, entrusting their kids to the teacher that was in charge. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and slid it open to reveal the time. There was a little bit of time until he was late for his job.
Lily hadn't even taken the egg shards from under his bed yet. He was just too lazy to get it from the bottom of the bed to the outside world. "That'd be good. He'd be pretty surprised though. But it'd be good for him to know." He said with a nod. "Stas still has most of his shards. I'll probably put them in a glass jar or something when I get back home tonight." he said as he voiced his idea.
Stas looked over at mrs pemberley who had helped Vergil. His string was fixed as if it were magic. His eyes grew wide as he looked on his own string and then at Vergil's fixed one. He shoved it in his mouth and pulled it back out. The string, though wet, was still broken. "Can you help me, please?" He said softly as he held out his string to the woman who was smiling towards him. "Yes. It is broked." He said with a frown towards Mrs. Pemberley.
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Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2009 8:07 am
Reuben had to smile. "Yeah, that's true. I'm not as used to having to be so firm. Usually the kids I work with are a bit more mature." He amended this statement quickly so that Lily wouldn't get the wrong idea. "I teach high school kids, but I guess you could say that they need a strictness, too, just not as rigid as these guys." He gestured to Vergil and his classmates.
Reuben stretched. What, was he getting sleepy again already? He'd have to hit the coffee maker when he got to work for sure. "I think he'll like that." He checked his watch again and sighed. "Man, I hate to do this, but I need to get going. I promised one of my sections that I'd have their papers graded for them today, and I'm only halfway through. Want to head out with me, or do you want to stay a little longer?"
Mrs. Pemberley smiled and nodded. "Of course, Stasio. Here." She took the string gently, noticed the frayed end, and pulled out a pair of safety scissors from her pocket. "I'm just going to snip off the 'broken' part, okay?" She said, using the boys' word. "We'll still be able to tie your necklace just fine, so don't worry. This will make it easier." And with that, she cut off a small segment of the string so that only the un-frayed part of it remained.
Vergil, even though he was trying to string noodles along at the speed of light, paused to witness this amazing display of string-fixing. "Cool, Stas!" He breathed. "You've! got a good string again!"
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