Mark was so funny! He sprang off my bed, fell to his knees and was hugging my dad’s leg while saying, “Oh thank you kind sir! And might I beg you for a morsel of food?”
Dad reached down, grabbed Mark by the hair and lifted my friend off him. Of course dad didn’t really pull Mark’s hair, the two of them just made it look that way.
“I suppose next you’ll want to wash yourself in MY tub!” dad said still holding Mark by the hair.
“You mean,” as he GULPED a breath, “a bath?” Mark asked, causing me to laugh out loud.
Dad let go of Mark’s hair and playfully wiped it on his overcoat, “perhaps two baths are in order.”
I was laughing so hard I thought I was going to wet myself.
“And you could probably use one yourself, son of mine!” Dad said while giving me a disgusted look.
Trying to stifle my giggles, I said, “Yes dear father! I shall go wash at once!”
Dad left, leaving Mark and me falling all over each other with laughter. After dinner, Mark took a shower and I took one after him. Then the two of us spent the rest of the evening, and much of the night, talking about stupid stuff that seemed important, only to us.
The following day, school was closed, so Mark and I started a snow shoveling business. During the night, more than five inches of snow had fallen, but Mark and I found that on the opposite side of the street from my house, the snow was more like a foot deep and sometimes even deeper in places. That first day, we raked in over forty-dollars and we almost doubled that on the second day because it snowed a little more that night. Mark hadn’t slept over that second night though; however we had already planned on getting up early to get a jump on shoveling.
Sean showed up around lunch time, but he didn’t want any part of snow shoveling. He was more concerned with throwing snowballs at us. Mark and I took a few minutes out of our busy work to pelt Sean with a few dozen snowballs. Actually, that was really fun right up to the point where Sean got in a lucky throw and nailed me in the face.
“Sean! When I catch you, you’re dead!” I shouted and took off running for him. Thankfully, the snow drift Sean had been using as a snow shield also slowed him down enough to allow me to catch up to him. When I was only a couple feet away from him, I leapt into the air and pounced on him like a snow leopard.
As I leapt onto him, he screeched like a barn owl. I sat on his back, shoved him face first into the snow and said, “Thought you would get away with ambushing us, huh?”
He struggled to get away and nearly folded himself in half backwards so that he could get his face out of the snow to breathe.
“Max, you’re crushing me!” He whined, but he should have saved his breath because I had him right where I wanted him. I dug my fingers into the sides of his thick wool coat and began tickling his ribs. When he started to scream, I slid my butt so that I was nearly sitting on his shoulder blades. His face was forced back into the snow.
Mark caught up to us, his entire front was covered in snow and I knew he’d taken a nose dive into the snow while trying to race over.
“Hold him down!” Mark cheered.
“What do you think I’m doing? Taking a nap?” I said as Sean once again was able to lift his face out of the snow; but only barely.
“Get off me!” Sean screamed.
Mark dropped to his knees, yanked off his right glove, and before Sean or I knew what was happening, Mark had pulled open the back of Sean’s pants and GoodNite, exposing Sean’s gleaming white butt which was nearly as white as the snow around us. Mark began shoveling snow into Sean’s pants with his one gloved hand while Sean screamed for us to stop.
With the back of his GoodNite packed with snow, Mark and I hurdled ourselves off of him. Sean quickly got to his feet; his face was streaked with frozen tears. Snow was caked to his eyebrows and the front of his hair. During the struggle, he’d lost his hat. He called us a couple of buttheads and ran away.
Mark and I were falling all over each other laughing. “Oh man that was funny!” Mark roared.
From a distance, Sean’s voice carried across the frosty air, “I hate you guys!”
It seemed to take forever for the two of us to be able to stand again and get back to shoveling snow. Every time we’d stop laughing, we’d look at each other and start all over again. We took great delight in telling and retelling the tail to each other.
“You know, we’re going to have to watch our backs now.” I told Mark “He’s going to get even with us!”
Mark began laughing again, slipped on a small patch of ice, and his feet went flying into the air. He hit the sidewalk, all the while still laughing his head off.
“You alright?” I asked him.
“Stop making me laugh!” he groaned and laughed at the same time.
Mark got back to his feet. He was holding his butt and snorting with laughter.
It almost looked like he wanted to say something, but couldn’t stop himself from giggling long enough to put two words together.
“What?” I asked him as I tried so very hard not to laugh, but failed miserably.
He took a deep breath and blurted out, “I bet Jack Frost is nipping at more than his nose by now!”
I snorted too and fell over sideways into the snow. “Oh please stop!” I too was holding my stomach and doubled over, “Bet his cheeks are nice and rosy!”
“My butt hurts!” Mark chuckled.
“My stomach hurts!” I laughed.
The two of us carried on like that the rest of the day. Sean never attempted a second military assault which was something I was very grateful for. If he had, we probably wouldn’t have seen him coming.
