The Severed Cortex

I'm way past due on writing about Robert. Way past due. Since maybe back before Labor Day.

We had our one year anniversary a couple of months ago and BBBS had us all meet together to see if we want to renew for another year. For me it was a no brainer. Of course I wanted to continue hanging out with Robert. The good news is that Robert wanted to continue hanging out with us too. As part of the '1 year review', Beverly asked Robert to describe Nancy and I each with one word.
Robert declared me cool.
Robert defined Nancy as tidy.
I laugh. It's amazing how perceptive kids can be.

Since that time, we have done a couple of things.
Shortly after the one year review, we went to Pere Marquette and hiked. For the most part it went great but Robert didn't care for the bugs. We tried to tell him if he sat still and ignored them they wouldn't bother him, but he didn't listen to us. Instead he shrieked and tried to run away from them. On the way down the trail he got freaked out because he thought he saw a snake. Sometimes, the imagination of kids have be very vivid. We assured him we wouldn't let a snake get him and he seemed to calm down shortly after that. On the way home we stopped in Grafton for ice cream.

A couple weeks after that we picked Robert up and drove to our old stomping grounds (U. City) to eat pizza at Dewey's. Granted, Dewey's wasn't around when we lived there, (it was first a Green Grocer Hippie Store and later Humble Abode furniture store), but it is our old stomping grounds. After pizza we met our friends Jeff and Holly at a park near their house for a neighborhood party. Jeff booked the bands for the three weekend event and this particular weekend he booked a group of Webster University jazz students who played several great sets of jazz/funk. Plus the guitarist played a Hamer Studio Custom like mine. Somehow he could make his sound way better than I can make mine sound. Not sure what causes that. Perhaps mine is defective. Robert played with Ben in the playground right next to the bandstand and occasionally I walked in there and played with them too. Surprisingly, we weren't able to completely run all the energy out of Robert.

Two weeks ago, I picked Robert up and we headed to the Godfrey Corn Maze. Also showing up to the maze were several co-workers; Steve had his two girls, Jane showed up with her daughter and her daughter's friend, and Nancy S. showed up with her BBBS little sister. Fortunately Steve and Nancy used to work in the Network department with some other Magellan employees who had won a 'free everything' at the corn maze day. I had no idea they were going to be there, but man was it lucky for us. We got to do all the events for free and they fed us all the hot dogs, cokes, chips, and ice cream we wanted. It was pretty freakin' awesome. We rolled around in the corn crib, went through the maze, and then Robert rode both the hayride and the little train, which oddly enough was made out of 55 gallon barrels painted to look like cows. The whole thing was pulled by a lawn tractor. It looked like fun.