I had turkey and pepper jack melts ready in the oven, fresh fruit salad and the requisite Peppermint Patties on the table, and chili on the stove when the guys arrived. As they walked in, one said, "What smells so good?" Another said, "Oh, look! The table is bigger." Stephen said, "Mrs. R., have I told you I love you?" We handed down the DPs and Cokes, and they sat down while I put sandwiches on plates and passed them down the sides of the table. When I started passing the bowls of chili, they got silly and started passing the bowls around and around the table like my preschool students sometimes do with their bags of popcorn.
"Where are the ladies?", I asked, referring to the two girls.
"They're crazy. They didn't come."
"We're serious, Mrs. R. We really look forward to lunch on Fridays. There's always lots of good food and it's fun."
"Yeah, those sandwiches with the avocado we had last time were an art form!" This from the giant Jason.
The six guys were totally relaxed around the larger table, and the lack of the girls changed the dynamic, of course. Fisch had two DPs and challenged Chris to a semi-mock fork fight in the living room. I broke it up when I began to fear for the tines. They all just laughed. As always, they made a good faith effort at cleaning up the paper plates and soda cans, and expressed their appreciation as they headed back to school. If Dopey had come back, I would have kissed him on his bald head. "What funny little men!", Snow White would say. She would mean young men, not little, in this case. I like Friday lunch as much as they do.
My mom's letters this week have the Disney stamps on the envelopes. I might have to rent "Bambi". I watched all of "Snow White" in July. I was cuing videos for summer camp, but got sucked into the incredible animation. One of Disney's animators on those films, Franklin Thomas, passed away this week at age ninety-two. I will thank him for his art everytime the gang comes to lunch.
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