While my mom and dad continued “conferencing” in the kitchen, Annie, Norman, Jeter, and I were in my room, counting our candy. It was strange having Annie in my room. I was thinking about getting the place fumigated.
“Hey, why is there only one bed?” Annie asked, looking around. “Doesn’t Norman sleep in here too?”
Before I could say anything, Norman pointed to his crate. “I have found that packaging materials and a wooden chamber provide a superior sleep-mode experience than can be found by utilizing a bed or a couch, or even a toy box.”
“Should have figured,” Annie said, rolling her eyes.
As it turned out, Norman had a LOT more candy than the rest of us. People at nearly every apartment we’d stopped at clearly preferred his costume. That sucked. I was out-trick-or-treated by a rookie.
Anyway, back to the feast. Just as I was wondering if I might be able to talk Norman out of some of his candy, he pushed his treats toward Annie, Jeter, and me.
“Help yourself,” he said. “I have no interest in this candy now that my field research is completed for the evening.”
“Rrrr, that’s mighty fine of you, lad,” Jeter said as we divided Norman’s candy. “A fine pirate ye are. May ye never walk the plank!”
Sometimes the pirate thing was a little annoying.
And then the big debate: Should I start with a mini Three Musketeers, or eat the candy corn first? Or maybe some peanut M&M’s to begin the festivities . . .
The conferencing in the kitchen turned into a shouting match. Ugh. There is almost nothing worse than having your parents fight when your friends are over. Do they have any clue how embarrassing it is?
I didn’t hear what my dad said, but my mom yelled something about how Dad “brought this danger to our doorstep,” and now it was time to “step up and do the right thing for this family.”
The candy corn (made my decision) went sour in my mouth. Could my parents be thinking of shipping Norman back to France? That would be terrible! Now I couldn’t even swallow. But if they wanted Norman gone, he was gone. Adults ruled the world, and this family.
I spat the orange and yellow mush into a Kleenex. Annie, seeing this, ewwed.
The fight kept going on, and we heard lots of it. Annie and Jeter looked like they felt bad for me. I felt bad for me. While I was trying to think of a way to save the day, Norman beat me to it by singing, totally out of the blue, that one French song.
“Alouette, gentille Alouette, Alouette, je te plumerai.”
To my surprise, Jeter and Annie joined in. So I did too, all of us cranking it up so we drowned out my mom and dad. I think that’s something every kid—even a robot kid—understands, that yelling parents must be drowned out no matter what, even if singing a silly French song about plucking a dead bird is your best option.
“Je te plumerai la tête, Je te plumerai la tête, Et la tête, et la tête . . . Alouette, gentille Alouette, Alouette, je te plumerai . . .”