Lego Wars

By Jody Worsham

All rights reserved for Diplomatic Immunity

My eight-year-old purchased a Lego set with the Christmas gift cards he had received.  I would have preferred that he purchase a small country instead, but he wanted Legos.  When he got home, he piled all 514 pieces on a dinner plate and proceeded to separate them out.

“Have fun!” and I left to take the twelve-year-old to ballet class; then I would have another Wal-Mart walk-about while I waited.  When we returned home, I found the eight-year-old with frustration streaming down his face.  With my teeth artfully imbedded in my tongue “I told you not to get such a complicated toy” came out as “I bet your sister can assemble that in no time.  Want her to try?”

With the pre-teen throwing dartful glances at me, I whisked the eight-year-old to the kitchen for the universal magic cure-all…chocolate and Diet Coke.  With caffeine and endorphins coursing through his veins, he raced outside and up a tree while his sister assembled micro Lego dots.

An hour later, the eight-year-old once again came running in with anger streaming down his face.

“She put my Super Secret Police all terrain SWAT mobile together, then took three pieces off and won’t tell me which ones they are,” said a little future-hubby-without-a-clue.  I bit my tongue, again.

“Well I spent a whole hour putting that thing together when I could have been doing something really important like texting my bff" came from the future-wife-in-training.

 My teeth attacked my tongue.

“Wid  ooo ahwebble it an hi wee pieces wike he ed?”  My tongue had doubled in size.

Translation:  “Did you assemble it then hide three pieces like he said?”

“Yes, but he wouldn’t come down out of the tree to even look at it after I spent all that time putting it together."

At that point Dr. Hubby entered the playroom.  He spoke not a word but went straight to work and scooped up all the logo pieces and turned with a jerk.   Sorry, wrong season...poem.

He placed the logos in the center of the table and declared it the DMZ.  Eight-year-olds to the north, twelve-year-olds to the south.  It didn’t matter.  The eight-year-old had already lost interest and retreated to the tree and the twelve-year-old had gone to her room for uninterrupted texting.  I was in the kitchen soaking my tongue in a glass of flavored alcohol and ice.  Hubby followed close behind looking for his universal tranquilizers: “Where’d you hide the Snickers?  Not even any chocolate bars left? Who drank all my Dr. Peppers? “

With the Lego Truce in effect, I am once again going to Wal-Mart.   I will avoid the Lego aisle.  I don’t think I could resist the temptation. With my current frame of mine and swollen tongue, tomorrow’s lead story on CNN might be “Wabbit Woman Wacks Wego aisle.” 

Over the River and Through the Woods...to Grandma's Condo

By Jody Worsham

All rights reserved so Currier and Ives can adopt Aunt Lurlean

If you are of the Boomer generation, pre or slightly post, you probably grew up seeing Currier and Ives Christmas cards displayed around the house or on the tins holding the ten ton fruit cake.  Christmas Eve or Christmas Day found you at Grandma’s with plenty of room to run around with all the cousins. Later you would be seated at the “kids” table for real mashed potatoes, string beans, and ham or chicken and dressing, before diving into the mounds of Christmas presents piled under a real Christmas tree.  At least that is how I remember it, but families have changed since Currier and Ives as my friends and neighbors will tell you.   

  “We had the grandkids for five days.  I’m plumb wore out.”

 “Glad this is over with.”

 “Why would you put people who don’t even speak to each other during the entire year together in the same room on the same day and expect them to be civil to each other? It is just stupid.”

 “I know there were only six of them, but it felt like a whole herd had moved in.”

 “Whee, I’m free!  No more cooking three meals a day for four days for twelve people in a kitchen designed for two!” 

“I hinted to my son-in-laws that the pine needles on my roof needed sweeping off…they agreed.” 

“We managed to get through it.”

 “Over the River and Through the Woods” kept playing in my head against a snowy Currier and Ives backdrop. Time to read between the lines and remind myself they didn’t have an Aunt Lurlean, at least that they would admit to.

 First, if you could get to Grandmother’s house in a horse drawn sleigh over snow without freezing to death, she must not live very far.  No five hour trips in a car.  Unless that sleigh was from “Back to the Future” there were no electronic games or DVD players in that sleigh so rather than bickering or aiming their blaster ray guns at each other, siblings would huddle together for warmth and encourage each other to cross the imaginary DMZ line drawn in the middle of the seat.  The one horsepower sleigh would get good hay mileage, so no thirty minute detour hunting for a gas station so Aunt Lurlean could save 2 cents a gallon on gasoline.  “The horse knows the way…” thus avoiding backseat driving or complaining from Aunt Lurlean that the On Star guy’s accent is not Southern.

The farmhouse is pictured as a two story job with a candle glowing in every window, obviously low maintenance.  Aunt Lurlean would require a generator as backup to avoid stress over possible downed power lines resulting in a semi-microwaved turkey.  The barn offers a place for the children to expend their energy.  Today Grandma may live in a condo and more than likely the pool and game room will be closed for the holidays forcing Aunt Lurlean to invent new games to occupy the children:  Monotonous, Scraping, Family Feuding, Twisted, Name that Dish, Repo Man, Dueling-in-laws, and Angry Bird-Brains.

Currier and Ives would have their family gathered around the Christmas tree and all would be able to trace their family tree with multiple branches down to one root.   Today’s family tree would resemble a stick with so many grafts that no one knows where the original root system began, well except for Aunt Lurlean and she’s keeping those skeletons locked in the closet ... temporarily.

 “Over the river and through the highway to Granny’s condo we go.   Lurlean knows the way to avoid the tolls through the gray and slushy snow, oh.”   Ok, so that’s not the words.  But we didn’t have Currier and Ives Christmases either. The only thing today that resembles a Currier and Ives Christmas is those tins with the fruitcake in them.  I think it is the same fruitcake.