Short Days, Short Tempers

Parents take note: It is illegal and wrong to bind your children with blue painter's tape and throw them through the back door into a snowbank. I thought this through at some length and came to that inevitable conclusion. It will be no mystery to you how the subject came up in the first place if you have or have ever had small children in your house in the days preceding Christmas. Their unstable little personalities go into complete meltdown until the China Effect eats every last vestige of celebration from your mood and household. We've threatened to cancel Christmas, to sue Santa Claus, to enlist them in the Marines (although Blackwater would be more remunerative), and to fill their stockings with sticks and rocks. Coal is far more expensive than these little monsters deserve. Nothing, of course, makes a scrap of difference in their behavior. So, we count the days until Christmas in some grim advent ritual and wait for each day to end. Bedtime. Peace. Today is the shortest day of the year. Good thing.