Walnuts on My Windshield

Issue #6

Thursday, July 22, 2004

None of our weeks are boring, but this week has been particularly eventful, even for the Roberts gang. I will try to summarize the good, the bad and the ugly, not necessarily in that order.

All last week, Jessica spent three hours each morning at the Branson High School, participating in the annual Children's Theater Workshop, which was sponsored jointly by the Branson Arts Council and the City of Branson Parks and Recreation Department. Jessica did this last year also, but last year all ages of kids were together. This year, the older kids (12-15) had their own group, and that worked out much better.

After 15 hours of training and practice, their group of nine students performed "Shakespeare to Go," a farce based on several well-known scenes from various of the Bard's plays. Jessica was cast as the stage manager, and she played the part very well. She had all her lines down cold, and she was totally in her element. If I do say so myself, she was really quite GOOD. We were proud and delighted to see one of her gifts so evident, and now we are looking for other dramatic outlets for her. She just can't stand to wait a whole year before being able to do this again! I was able to take a number pictures and once they're back on CD, we may be posting them online.

The next day, a Saturday, Scott took us to Shadow Rock Park in nearby Forsyth, for some biking (Scott, Josiah, Jessica, Andrew, and me), tennis practice (Scott, Josiah and Jessica), swimming (those same three), and most notably bridge-jumping (also those same three daredevils). I will insert here that Josiah really seems to have a knack for tennis, much to his and Scott's delight.

It was a wonderful afternoon all the way around, but when Jessica told me that she and Scott had decided to jump off the bridge into Swan Creek, I was a bit apprehensive. The bridge is concrete, old, little traveled, and about 35 or 40 feet above the deepest part of the creek, just yards from where it empties into Bull Shoals Lake. It has a series of supporting concrete arches underneath it, which one can carefully walk up, and from which one can then (if one were to be so inclined!) jump from the somewhat safer height of about 25 feet.

Scott jumped from the bridge, Jessica and Josiah jumped from the arch, and I kept Andrew from climbing over the rail and falling in, took pictures, and was proud and happy. All this was repeated several times. Then, Andrew asked what that wiggly thing was. I finally figured out where he was pointing and realized that there was a very large snake in the water - looked to be a cottonmouth or maybe a copperhead - exactly where Josiah had just jumped. I informed the jumpers of this fact and we all watched the snake intently for several minutes.

We are generally not afraid of snakes. We like them and find them interesting, particularly when they are non-venomous. However, seeing a huge probably venomous snake right at the family's target jumping point changed my opinion a bit. It that setting, that particular snake was UGLY. I have seen quite a few snakes. Snake stories can be like fish stories. Realistically, this guy was so fat and so long from 40 feet up, that he was probably almost as big around as a plum and about four feet long.

The twisty gentleman finally departed and the jumping resumed. Scott jumped from a standing position on the rail of the bridge, and Jessica also jumped from the bridge. What a woman! She said that feeling of falling through the air was pretty wild. Three cheers for them all!

Tuesday evening, before supper, Andrew went to ride his bike on the dirt road by our house. I told him to stay riding on the dirt road and not go to any houses. When I called him for supper, he was nowhere to be found. I sent Jessica on her bike to look for him. When she came back empty, after having looked over the entire neighborhood and checked at several of his favorite friends' houses, I became alarmed. I jumped in the van and tore through the neighborhood, looking and hollering. Nothing. Nobody had seen him. His bike was nowhere. I was fighting panic. I was not winning.

I skidded back into the driveway. By then Scott had headed down the highway in the Honda to look for him. I ran in the house and called 911. By that time, I was crying, although I was able to answer the man's calm questions. The only thing I didn't know was what he was wearing. My mom always told me to wear clean underwear to the ER and to remember what people were wearing. My undies were OK, but all I knew about Andrew was that he was wearing shorts and a shirt and was probably barefoot. The 911 guy assured me they would send someone to our house ASAP.

My mind was racing. I was praying and thinking. None of the thoughts were good. If he wasn't in the house, and he wasn't in the yard, and he wasn't in the neighborhood, and his bike was gone, there weren't a lot of options left. If he had been hit by a car on the highway, Scott would have seen him. He is the friendliest kid in the world. He's cute. He's innocent. He had been gone about 15 or 20 minutes. In that amount of time a wild driver could get as far as. . . I couldn't think about that. The situation was really, really BAD.

I called our associate pastor on his cell, explained the situation and asked him to pray. He prayed right there on the phone, and just as he was finishing up, Andrew walked into the living room. I have never been so glad to see him in my life, except maybe when we picked him up at Mercy.

It turns out that he had gone to Ms. Judy's house (not allowed)- one of the houses both Jessica and I had ridden by, hollering. He had gotten off his bike (not allowed) and parked it in her back yard (not allowed) and gone into her house (not allowed) to play with her grandson who was visiting. He even asked her for a can of grape soda (not allowed), which she, being a nice grandma, gave him! Scott and the sheriff found him at Ms. Judy's at about the same time.

Andrew's bottom is becoming leathery and he is totally house-bound for a week. The front wheel is off his bike again. The sheriff talked to him also. We are being even more diligent with our discipline than usual, and we realize that with this kid's brains and personality, we simply cannot give him much freedom at all. I've been thinking about one of those invisible fences they use on dogs. . O God, may he learn to obey at five, so we don't have worse problems at 15!

And then today, we picked up Katie from Summerscape. It was definitely bittersweet. She had accomplished a lot in her classes and was able to show us what she had done - amazing! She had also gotten to know some neat friends, and it was very hard for her to say goodbye to them. All the students were given contact information on everyone else, so I think she will keep in touch with some of them via email. This was her first time to "hang out" with a gang of kids her own age. Though she found some of the activities to be too silly for her, and although she said the cafeteria food was just horrid, I think overall it was a great adventure for her.

Until next time,

Patty

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I did finish It's Not About the Bike by Lance Armstrong. It was an amazing, riveting book. However, I am now tired of reading about notable non-Christians who beat cancer. This guy is truly incredible, but he really needs to get saved. Well, maybe he is by now. Ironically, as I write this, he is again competing in the Tour de France, which I think he has won virtually every year since that first time in the late '90s. I rate the books I read on a scale of 1-10 (10 being the best). This one gets a 7.

Quote of the Week: "You can't solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that created it." ~ Albert Einstein