Run, Run, as Fast as You Can, but You Can't Catch Jack, Because He's the Gingerbread Man

I never thought that Melissa would have another bun in the oven, but she surprised me with just that the other day.

Wait, that didn’t come out right. I meant to say one of her buns was in the oven.

WHOA! That’s really off the mark.

OK, I’ll back up and start at the beginning. She called several days ago and invited me and Kate to Jack’s holiday play.

“He’s going to be the gingerbread man,” she said. “He’s nervous, but he’s glad he won’t have to sing. He said he’ll be in the oven when they’re singing.”

(Get it, one of her buns was in the oven, again. GROAN!)

Can’t say as I blame Jack for not wanting to sing. After all, he’s no Justin Timberlake.




A lot of boys don’t like to sing except for, well, maybe Justin Bieber, and I don’t understand that phenomenon. From the first time Vincent, Jack, and Luke have stepped onto stages for pre-school and school activities, they’ve either not sung or mostly mouthed the words. Oh, besides Bieber, they do know another singer, Cousin Anthony had a star role in a musical during his senior year of high school. Who KNEW he could sing? We all thought he was just a star athlete.

As I recall, Brendan didn’t like to sing much, either, and he spent a lot of his acting career as Joseph, or one of the Wise Asses, uh, I mean, Wise MEN, looking out at the audience.

But I digress, the same way my voice splits from notes when I try to sing myself. Who could resist such an invitation? We showed up bright and early — in fact, early enough to get front-row seats if we hadn’t been so casual and that rude woman wouldn’t have selfishly called dibs on the whole dadgum front row.

As the singing started, I had to smile when I thought of Jack being snug as a bug in the rug behind the colorful façade of a gingerbread house. But then, I spied someone in a brown, hooded getup in the back row who looked strangely like Jack.

Sure ’nuf, twas he, just days before Christmas, that little creature was stirring with a song from his mouth.

As the echoes of the children’s voices faded into the corners of the school cafeteria, the action-adventure play began, with groups of children saying they were going to catch a gingerbread man and Jack periodically taunting, “Run, RUN, as fast as you can, but you can’t catch ME because I’m the Gingerbread Man!”

In groups of four, and five, and six, they chased him around the stage, and he eluded them each time. Two impressions I had:

1. He’s a REALLY cute little guy.

2. GOSH, he’s got a big class. I didn’t think the play was EVER going to end. But I guess it just seemed that way. I guess the teacher had to let everybody have a moment on stage; they can't all be stars like Jack.

But it did, and Jack posed for the paparazzi, in this case, with his little brother Patrick. Two cute little buns, out of Melissa’s oven.