The funniest story ever told....

Ok...the story wasn't funny, it was a story about a 6th grade boy being escorted off the kids school bus by the principal for bullying...but the TELLING of the story was pretty funny.

Peter starts out by rearranging the kitchen chairs to resemble the layout of a bus. I glance at Wayne and he gives me the universal shrug that says 'Just go with it' and then leaves the room...he's already heard the story.

After firmly establishing where he is sitting and where his friends were sitting just chatting "calmly, like we do every day." Peter recounts his sudden awareness that it was taking longer to get to the bus stop than usual...and further, that they had returned to school and that their principal was getting on the bus! All this told with dramatic flourishes that are hard to capture in print...just imagine any detective pacing around a room retelling how they pieced the crime together.

Then he re-enacts how, as the principal is boarding the bus he coaches his buddies to 'pull up their hoods, and act innocent!' I point out that most people would find the act of three boys pulling up their hoods as the principal comes near to be the epitome of 'not innocent'...he just grins and continues with his story because he's got that covered...they boys PRETEND that they don't know each other and make small talk as if they are strangers...nothing suspicious about that! The three hooded strangers eventually realize that they are not the subject of the principals concern (see Mom, it worked!) and Peter tells the friend on the end seat to lean over and listen in on the principal's conversation while he and the third friend continue to pretend to be innocent (way to throw the friend to the wolves there Peter). This is when there is the great reveal about it being a 6th grader who is being a accused of bullying....and when Abby takes over...

Not to be outdone by her brother Abby starts at the very beginning as well, in fact, before the beginning. SHE starts before getting on the bus and reinacts how she and her two friends were walking to the bus "like normal". At the end of that sentence she does this little hand waving gesture and says the words 'Fa la'. I've never heard her say this before, but it rolls of her tongue so easily that I can only assume that 'Fa la' is the new "whatever" among the elementary school set...or soon will be. She then speaks a lot of words about various friends and actions that later I realize had NOTHING to do with the story. As she is telling all this she is twirling around dramatically until she gets to the point where she is physically tired and invites me to sit down next to her on the couch to tell the rest of the story...which is in reality the actual story....apparently sitting down reset her brain to the task at hand. She provided a little more meat to the story because she was sitting in front of the boy in question and was able to lean in a little to hear some of the 'big questions' the principal was asking.

Apparently the boy was accused of slapping someone, but Abby didn't think it was anyone on the bus because she didn't "hear any slappage" and "no one was crying, so there wasn't any sign of slappage".

That was the end of the story...I still don't the actual details of the bullying - so I probably should be worried about that a bit...although Peter assures me he's only been bullied once at recess when an older boy came over and teased him about playing a game called 'Baby School'...but the way he said it you can tell he's realized that whenever you play a game called 'Baby School' you may be inviting danger.