The Costumes

Mom did a fantastic job on the musketeer costumes! Right away the boys put them on and wore them the rest of the day. Joey calls it his, “musket-sa-teer” costume! Of course, the boys had the initial sword fights befitting the outfits, but then after they had both been “eliminated” several times (new operative word at the Repass household – instead of, “killed”), they settled into an energetic game of “musketeer starwars”, followed by “musketeer lego somethin-or-other”, then…

So, what else are you supposed to do when mother and daddy are away (you know, having babies and such), and granddaddy and grandnonnie are watching over you, but to practice flying! This morning, Joey went running into the living room from the kitchen (you know the drill) and he tripped on the rug and went flying through the air. He had the same look on his face that I had my very first bike ride. I had walked my big brother’s bike up the hill, climbed up on the fence then onto the bike (I could not reach the ground or the pedals from anywhere on that bike – then, of course, there was that wretched bar which was strategically placed so as to render one younger brother, such as myself, breathless, and “potentially fatherless” as soon as I got on). As I went flying down the block continuing to pick up speed, the thought occurred to me that I had not bothered to calculate a “stopping paradigm”! I had the same look as Joey had this morning. It was like, oh no – now what! In Joey’s case, the base of the couch seemed the best procedure for flight termination (his head found the couch and he stopped). In my case, I thought if I can just negotiate the gate in our white picket fence I could stop before I went all the way down the hill and hit the street. So, I made the gate (not sure how I did that without brakes), but then I am going at least 60 (seemed like it) and I headed a course between our house and the Smith’s next door. At this point, my heart was pounding and I was breathless (but of course, I had not breathed in 5 minutes – remember that bar?) as I began to scrape the side of the house gradually slowing down. I finally stopped and another procedural strategy began to surface which I had overlooked – how do I get off this thing? So, after all of that, the bar, the downhill challenge, the gate, the side of the house, and now, this. The look returned as I, from a dead stop, just fell over, head hitting the side of the house.

Joey and I both learned valuable life lessons from our experiences. I am not sure what those lessons were as Joey was flying again in about 5 minutes and I was back on the bike in 24 hrs (took me that long to get my breath back).