Happy Birthday Mart and his Mart words.

Peter Belden let the screen door slam behind him as he entered the kitchen.

Helen turned to scold the insubordination of one of her children for continueing to let the door slam.  When she saw that the culprit was her husband, she lifted her face for a kiss instead.  As Peter released her, he caught a look at the piece of paper in her hands.  

“Acknowledgment, cardiopulmonary, totalitarianism…  Isn’t it a little late in the school year for spelling lists?”  Then he got a really good look at the project she was working on.  “Whoa, Helen.  That cake is huge, even for Mart’s infamous appetite.”

“Yes, well.  Trixie challenged all the other Bob-Whites to find words with fifteen letters in them for Mart’s birthday.  Then she convinced me to decorate the cake with the words the kids found.  So the cake has to be big.”  Helen gave Peter a conspiratorial wink and continued,  “I think the plan is that before Mart will be allowed to blow out his candles and eat, he will be expected to define each word on the cake.”

She finished the last word with a neat flourish.  “There!  I am done.  The last word to go on the cake is discourteousness.”

“Uh, Helen?  Discourteousness has sixteen letters, not fifteen.”

“Oh crab apples!  Hmm.  Oh, I know.  No matter how hard the boys try, Mart is way to big to be given a birthday spanking.  So discourteousness will have to be the one to ‘grow-on’.”

Peter put his arms around Helen again, and looked over her shoulder at the cake.  “Remember ten years ago, on his fifth birthday, when you caught Mart trying to peek at his presents to find out what he was getting?

“You told him, ‘Mart, you have made me reach the peak of my pique because you chose to peek at your presents.’  I told you then that you would rue the day that you introduced him to words and definitions, not to mention homophones.”

Helen laughed.  “Well, it is usually Trixie who suffers the most.  I wonder how big  the dictionary is that she got him?  It must be really big, because Brian got him a dictionary podium.  My curiosity was almost piqued enough to peek at the present and see what peak of weight and of pages she managed to get  this year.”

This piece had no independent editors. All mistakes are mine.