The Adventures of Nee-Pie and Che-Pie, Chapter Two
By Cheryl Calvert, with David Anderson
“Awwww! What cute little pigs! Are these yours? Are you raising them? Do they have names?”
My friend Nee-Pie, or Annette as the rest of the world knew her but who would forever be known fondly as Nee-Pie to me, and me as Che-Pie to her, aka Cheryl, was staying with us for a while on our farm in the valley.
We were the same age, met in seventh grade, and instantly became the friends of the sort perhaps few have growing up in those so important years of teenage girls.
“Their names are Breakfast and Din-Din,” I replied. “My dad named them because he didn’t want me to think of them as pets.
“‘Those pigs are gonna be one day on our plates,’ he’d say,” as I gave my best attempt at mimicking the gruff, gravelly voice of my dad.
“‘So best you toss any silly notion of them out of your pretty little noggin as them pigs being sweet and cute and see ‘em instead as bacon, pork chops and sausage.’”
Wide-eyed at this rather utilitarian description of the animals in our farmyard was nothing compared to what Nee-Pie would experience that night, and me too for that matter, our eyes as big as saucers from what would happen.
There are places I suppose where seconds can be counted between lightening flash and roll of thunder but not in our valley.
And certainly not that night.
That night the rain poured in torrents, beating down on the roof where Breakfast and Din-Din had sought protection from the storm, the deluge threatening to collapse both their shelter and ours.
Though anticipated by me given this was not unusual, it was Nee-Pie’s reaction to the sudden – and I admit quite loud – explosion of dynamite-like power thunder accompanied by the beyond brilliant flash of lightening that launched Nee-Pie from her bed below the window to my bed across the room.
The rolling, retreating, drumming across the valley and sudden darkness in the room as we huddled together was replaced by a c-r-e-a-k-i-n-g sinister sound as the bedroom door s-l-o-w-l-y opened and a shape entered and approached our fearful forms wrapped tightly in one-another’s arms, our faces cheek-to-cheek as we peered at whatever it was drawing closer, closer.
“M-M-Mrs. Sh-Sh-Shz Che-Pie?” The terrorized voice of Nee-Pie quavered in the stillness.
Yes, it was my mom.
She crawled into bed with us.
No doubt wanting to comfort us, at least that’s what she apparently had in mind, but ere the words were out of her mouth the bed collapsed at an angle, the three of our bodies rolling together in a hopeless tangle leaving me at the bottom below arms and legs, my head down – pinched between mattress and the wall – my feet up, my toes pointed toward the ceiling.
That’s when the laughter started.
I think it was my mom who began the chuckling, and though the sound was muffled given my awkward position, I could hear Nee-Pie then too and the ridiculousness of it all even got me to join in despite the fact that I was upside down.
In short order arms and legs were sorted out as attached to the person to whom they belonged; I did after all need to breathe.
And that night I fondly remember as the two little pigs wrapped in a blanket, with my mom too.
It’s a memory of the beauty of life the way it was meant to be lived, tangled in laughter with those you love.
