Scottie of the Will

Far from being propaganda (ten points to you recognizing my inspiration for today's title), this weekend was distinguished by our kids getting to spend time with their friends outside of school before they move out of state. Saturday after Martha had been home for a few hours we brought Jeffrey to a birthday party his classmate Will had invited him to in the back room of Gorilla Games at Dakota Square. Will's birthday is actually this summer, but his parents wanted to make sure he'd get to have a party with his friends before they move to Salt Lake City this summer. Believe it or not, when I heard of Utah's capital I thought of the Winter Olympics held there in 2002 and if I'd remembered who was in charge of organizing that (Mitt Romney, Massachusets governor in the mid-2000s) I wouldn't have been so ... verklempt at not recalling him as Barack Obama's opponent in the 2012 Presidential election.


I knew somebody ran against Obama, I just didn't remember who!


But I digress. I bring that up because I finished Rosemarie Ostler's book Slinging Mud (ISBN 9780399536915) yesterday, the same day I started it. Though the author posits attack campaigning formally began with the 1824 election -- four candidates ran and the margin among the top three was so narrow it went to the House of Representatives (the Constitution's 12th Amendment makes provision for that, check it out) -- but even Washington and his first five successors had their share of detractors, we in the United States experience nothing new hearing politicians being nasty. Indeed, many of the terms have come into general use: the term mudslinging itself originated in the mid-19th century, and our term sorehead for someone dissatisfied with a loss started out as "like a bear with a sore head" at about the same time. But anyone can be a sorehead now.


Others binge watch, binge eat, I binge read -- go figure.


So Sarah, Martha, and I were waiting at the mall eating pizza from Bruno's Pizza (as of yesterday, I have THREE nephews working at local pizzerias; two of them are at Papa Murphy's and one's at his first job with newly-opened Marco's Pizza) and we got a phone call from Sarah's friend -- but not classmate this year -- Scottie's mom asking if she could spend the night at our house for the last time before she and her family move to California after school's out. So after we got home from the party where Jeffrey got Little Caesar's pizza and birthday cake and won several football video games (that he told us about) Scottie's mom brought her by and the kids played some games and we watched Horrid Henry, a movie based on a children's book series from Great Britain, 


with a sequence in the middle that reminded me of A Clockwork Orange on vaudeville.


Since Scottie spent the night with us, she got to come to church with us Sunday morning and it happened to be our annual Spring Fling service where we've got the smell of caramel rolls wafting from the basement and the Sunday School kids singing as well as handing out flowers to their parents and grandparents. AND honoring those kids from preschool through fifth grade who have perfect attendance -- there were four of them, and two were Sarah and Jeffrey! And Sarah got recognized not only for perfect attendance this Sunday School year, but also for perfect attendance every Sunday since she was three years old!


The plaque is pretty nice.


But not on your teeth, you DON'T want plaque on your teeth!

David