You’re popular on Facebook. Guess who got into the frosting and now has a sugar hangover? Can you believe that bad elf drew pictures all over the bathroom tiles? What kind of crazy elf decides to empty the kids’ dressers, tossing clothes around the room?
Elf, you have freed the parents. All year, they have been role models for their children, dutifully eating their green beans and brown rice before having a very small piece of pie for dessert. They get up and go to work even though the three year old had a fever and was throwing up all night only to be cured at 7 AM and bounced off to school, leaving the parents with a tired no coffee can cure.
These parents stay sober at parties so they can drive home safely to babysitter. These parents use old flip phones so that the kid can rent a sousaphone and play in the middle school band. On Friday nights, these parents show up in sweaty, crowded gyms to listen to the middle school band play “Ode to Joy,” and though the word “play” is not exactly what the children are doing with the song, the parents cheer wildly.
These parents worry. The D on the last math test. The way their son seems too fragile these days. The way the twins fight all the time. They watch the news and worry. They watch the Internet and worry. They look at the cost of college and then try to go to sleep.
They don’t sleep. The parents just want to play. They’ve been good up until now and they just need to release a little steam, be a little bad. They break open the brandy and after a couple hot toddies, they are draping toilet paper all over the hallway and eating bags of skittles.
The kids know. They’ve always known. They pretend, like their parents, to be surprised. The elves are so bad.
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