BAE BOY

3-16

But apparently, she'd taken it to heart. And told Yoshi. Maybe other people, too. Which explained all this, maybe...

Yoshi smiled some more and said, "Ah. A light goes on! Very good!"

I laughed, and Yoli reached over and gave me a pat on the shoulder. Another one who'd heard this story, probably. And Wyatt, too? Wow.

"We are here, to show you what you have accomplished," Yoshi told me. "We know that nothing we say will really matter because you like to worry!"

That made everybody laugh. Including me. Because he was kind of right. I mean, I don't like to worry, but I feel weird if I'm don't have anyone to "mama duck" around anymore. That's my jam, getting those ducks in a row. Or herding cats, as our Cat likes to put it. I'm actually good at that. I just am. I don't know why.

He looked at Dylan and said, "Ladies first!"

And the tokidokis sort of shoved each other up to the stage, all nervous and giggly as always.

In fact, when Dylan went up to the mic next to Yoshi, she got all trembly and went, "Oh my God, I cannot get used to talking to this man!"

And when he gave her a serious Japanese bow she just wrung her hands and squealed. Which made us all laugh again.

But she gathered her wits and waved to someone up on the catwalk above us. And they lowered this screen I hadn't noticed 'way up in the rafters.

And she shook back her strawberry red hair, looked at me, and said, "So, like, we were asked to think of a creative way to tell you all the things that KJC and KJF have done over the past few months. And some of the things that you and your amaaaaazing wife have accomplished aside from that, too. And...well...because we met in school, you and me and...the girls here...we figured this would be the best way to do that. So..."

She paused, as if she was trying to think of a way to transition into the actual presentation. But then she just shrugged and said, "Enjoy!"

And gave Brittany a shove, which turned into a sort of domino thing, each girl bumping into the other and stumbling toward the steps. It looked like some kind of Marx Brothers routine. But it was just my tokidokis being their silly selves.

And as they were still galumphing down those steps, the first slide of what would turn out to be a hilariously corny PowerPoint presentation appeared--with a gunshot sound effect. Which kind of set the tone for the whole thing.

See, they had deliberately piled on all the wacky, cartoony music and graphics and characters that some teachers still use for classroom presentations to this day. Even the awful canned applause and laughter and "oooos" and "ahhhhs" and "boings" and stuff like that.

Every slide transition was insane, too. The way kids do them when they're just learning how to use the program. So all the bullet points and pictures and things kept zooming or spiraling in and out or flying from one side of the screen to the other--you know what I mean. If you had that thing where you get seizures from flickering screens, you were a goner during that presentation.

But what was on the slides was pretty dope.

I mean, the reason I'd said what I said is because from my vantage point it's like watching someone put a jigsaw puzzle together. Lots of someones in all the different teams. I see pieces, all the different projects, as they're happening. But sometimes I don't even get to see the finished picture before they're on to something new.

So to really help me "get it," they hit me with a blizzard of bullet points. Starting with the foundation side, KCF.

That part went by pretty quick, because mostly we funded other people's programs. But we had done a lot of things ourselves. Like adding a medical team to the food truck program, with their own trucks and "on call" staff for emergencies and night runs.