The Home of the Brave
2006-07-12, 1:37 p.m.

Have I told you how much I love teenagers?

Daughter has two of her favorite creatures over, Actor Boy and Actor Boy�s Buddy. Being the juvenile males of the species, they have been doing what the juvenile males of the species do.

Fake roundhouse smackdowns

Fake midair flights from the trampoline

Some things of which we really have no idea

And the girl just bides her time and looks on apathetically. She�s used to it.

And when finally Chuck Norris descended from the heavens and told them to knock it off, they decided they needed to rent horror movies. NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED. WE NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED SCARY MOOOOOOOOOOVIES. After which they were all going to sleep in the tree house. Cause they are BAD BAD SMOOTH mo fos. They can watch scary movies full of eeeeeeeevilllllllllllle and sleep 20 feet away from the house.

Yeah, right.

They picked out Shaun of the Dead (hilARious) and Dawn of the Dead (uncut) and I suggested Poltergeist, upon which began The Lecture from Daughter at how lame, lame, LAME my horror movie suggestions are, they are not scary, they want something scary, scary and eeeeeeeeeeeevilllllllllllllle because they are teens and they are big and bad now and they can handle all this stuff. The boys were all about Poltergeist. I suggested another oldie but goodie:

The Amityville Horror.

Over Daughter�s vehement protests about Mom�s Lame Movie Suggestions, Actor Boy and Actor Boy�s Buddy snatched up Poltergeist and The Amityville Horror and made for the exit. They decided to watch the movies in alphabetical order to prevent any squabbling, and to overrule the glowering girl on the back seat.

They hadn�t been watching long before the shrieking started. They paused the movie and en masse, plowed into the room where I was sitting.

�THIS MOVIE IS SERIOUSLY FREAKING US OUT.�

�Amazing, since it�s so lame.�

Daughter was not amused.

They shuttled en masse back into her room and hit �Play�. More shrieking.

Pause movie. Re-enter pod of teens, bearing Daughter�s ceramic piggy bank.

�IT�S STARING AT US.�

Shuffle shuffle. The faint strains of an argument from her room:
�I�m not sitting next to the window, YOU are.�
�OH NO I�M NOT, YOU ARE!�

Resume movie.

I casually got up, went out on the front porch, hum de dum de dum, walked over to Daughter�s bedroom window, and
BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM.

I went back in the house. Actor Boy was in the fetal position. Daughter had Actor Boy�s Buddy in a headlock. I reminded Daughter of how lame my movie choices were and asked if they were going to sleep in the tree house.

Seems they aren�t quite THAT big and bad.

When Daughter has boy buddies over, they always sleep in Son�s room. But last night, the pod just couldn�t be split up for reasons of safety. They might have been eaten along the way. This morning, Daughter was on her top bunk, the boys were glommed together on the bottom futon, EVERY SINGLE light was on (including the hall light), and the tv was blaring the warm exorcistic fuzzies of the Disney Channel.

And the observation of Actor Boy�s Buddy at breakfast:

�It wasn�t that scary.�

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