Ah, Christmas. A time of family, food, and rapacious consumerism – three of my favorite things. I don’t know what sorts of things you do on Christmas, but here is a bit of mine:<\/p>\n
It’s Christmas morning. Shamus and Rachel are in the kitchen. Rachel is using the laptop and Shamus is holding an extra-sharp KITCHEN KNIFE, weighing it in one hand like he’s about to throw it. Rachel is almost 16. She’s tall, assertive, and headstrong, but also wary of her trickster father.<\/p>\n
SHAMUS:<\/p>\n
Wanna play a game?<\/p>\n
RACHEL:<\/p>\n
What daddy? (Sees knife.) NO! Go away!<\/p>\n
SHAMUS: <\/p>\n
Come on. It’ll be fun.<\/p>\n
RACHEL:<\/p>\n
(Adamantly.) I don’t want to play any game that involves knife throwing!<\/p>\n
SHAMUS:<\/p>\n
(Still bobbing the knife up and down.) I’m not gonna throw it.<\/p>\n
(Rachel raises one eyebrow at him, extremely skeptical.)<\/p>\n
I’ll TOSS it, and you can catch it.<\/p>\n
RACHEL:<\/p>\n
No!<\/p>\n
SHAMUS:<\/p>\n
Come on. It’ll be fun.<\/p>\n
RACHEL:<\/p>\n
I don’t want to be stabbed with a knife!<\/p>\n
SHAMUS: <\/p>\n
That’s why you should make sure to catch it.<\/p>\n
RACHEL:<\/p>\n
I’m busy. Go away. (She turns back to the laptop.)<\/p>\n
SHAMUS:<\/p>\n
(Shamus quickly sets the knife down and picks up a magic marker.)<\/p>\n
Catch!<\/p>\n
RACHEL:<\/p>\n
(Seeing the object flying at her out of the corner of her eye.) Gah! No! Ah!<\/p>\n
(The magic marker has bounced harmlessly off and landed in her lap. Rachel waves her arms frantically, thinking she’s just been hit with a knife. She’s squealing and freaking out like she’s got a bug on her. When the fit is over she finds the magic marker.)<\/p>\n
That was mean!<\/p>\n
SHAMUS:<\/p>\n
(Laughing.) Sorry. <\/p>\n
RACHEL:<\/p>\n
(Getting angry.) I can’t believe you did that! I thought you threw a knife at me.<\/p>\n
SHAMUS:<\/p>\n
Yeah. That part was awesome.<\/p>\n
RACHEL:<\/p>\n
(Kind of half-kidding, half-pissed.) You’re a horrible father!<\/p>\n
SHAMUS: <\/p>\n
Aw. I didn’t mean to upset you. <\/p>\n
(Rachel glowers at him.)<\/p>\n
Let me make it up to you.<\/p>\n
RACHEL:<\/p>\n
(Guardedly.) How?<\/p>\n
SHAMUS:<\/p>\n
I’ll do the same prank to someone else while you watch.<\/p>\n
RACHEL:<\/p>\n
(Beat.)<\/p>\n
Okay.
\n<\/center><\/p>\n
Merry Christmas from the Youngs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ah, Christmas. A time of family, food, and rapacious consumerism – three of my favorite things. I don’t know what sorts of things you do on Christmas, but here is a bit of mine:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[326,327],"class_list":["post-21884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-bad-parenting","tag-christmas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}