I said, "Do you know what that is?"
He said, "Yeah."
I said, "What?"
He said, "I no know."
I said, "It's when you dig for remains. Dinosaur bones. Buried treasure."
He stood in front of me.
"We'll, do you know of anywhere we might start digging?"
"No."
"That's what I thought you'd say, Son. How about we start beside the chair?"
We have a large, obnoxious red chair in our living room. That's where things get stashed when we want to hide them, or when we want to lose them. (Ordinarily, I would look myself, but since I broke my leg and I'm still on the walker, it's a little hard to manipulate myself into tight spaces like that).
"Let's look there for the yarn you dumped out of my brown tote bag when you needed something to carry your swimsuit to and from the Center."
He swallowed hard. "Oops'" he said.
"I am looking for the other ball of yarn that goes to the sock I finished knitting last night. As I recall, it was in that tote bag."
I held up the sock. "See? This is what you are looking for."
Charley did a sort of nose-dive beside the chair.
He held up a bag with yarn. I looked through it.
"Sorry, look again." I said.
Next, he held up some separate yarns. I put them each into another bag. "No, keep looking."
Another bag of yarn. Another ball. Another bag. More wadded yarn. All went into the same bag. "This time it's all going to stay in the bag, right?"
"Right."
About 10 minutes into the dig, he said, "I tired, Mom."
"Keep digging," I said. He grumbled.
"We'll, if you hadn't dumped my yarn out you wouldn't be working up a sweat."
Finally, he had a hit. "Aha!"
He held up a partially knitted sock.
"That's it!" I said. "I started knitting it last year but it was too big." I would have unravel it, but so what. At least I could re-knit it.
He handed it to me and I smelled it. "That's funny, it doesn't smell like bologna," I said.
I wasn't sure if he would remember or not, but he used to hide his bologna sandwiches in my knitting when he was little. I'm not sure why, but he always did that when he was mad at me.
"You silly homan" (woman) he said.
"So. What do you think, Hoss? Did you work up an appetite?"
"Yeah," he said.
"I've got some bread and bologna in the fridge. You want a sandwich?"
He put his hands on his hips.
"Or, I could fry up some yarn."
"Stop it, Mom."
"Just teasing."
"I know," he said.
"You know, Son, you could find all kinds of great stuff if you'd ever clean that room of yours."
"No, not."
"You never know, you might find Fred Flinstone."
"Ha, ha."
He headed To his room and shut the door behind him. "Guys, Mom cwazy." He was talking to his toys or his DVDs, I'm not sure which.
"I heard that," I yelled.
Truth be known though, I was relieved that he hadn't dumped my bag of yarn in his room.
By the time he'd have found it, the thing would have become a fossil.
