childhood play-by-play

When I blogged the other day, I wrote, “if childhood was a play-by-play, so much of it would be mundane, monotonous.” So then, I thought of what it would sound like, as a play-by-play. I imagined two broadcasters, in their fifties with fat Windsor knots over pastel patterned shirts, announcing every move around our house over the airwaves.

“Whoaaaa! Holden just dropped the entire bottle of ketchup onto the kitchen floor!”
“Let’s rewind that, I’d like to see it in slow motion.”
“It’s everywhere! I mean, everywhere. Ketchup on the chair legs, the refrigerator. Brandon is laughing, Holden is frozen, surprised.”
“My question is, what is Holly going to do here? Is she going to blow up? Or will she find it funny and laugh hysterically?”
“That’s a tough call, Herm. She can go either way. Today she has been uncharacteristically optimistic, so I’m going to go with ‘shake it off,’ in the words of the great Tay Tay.”
“That’s optimistic of you, Eric. Stats show that in 78% of unexpected surprises, Holly defaults to anger. Clearly that is more than all other emotions combined.”
“Yes, Herm. But keep in mind, many of those instances have involved lost items, like searching for keys or sunglasses. Lost items are her anger trigger. In this case, I think she will find the humor in it.”

*Holly enters the kitchen, sees ketchup everywhere, thinks it’s blood and promptly loses her shit*

“You got me there, Herm. You can’t argue with stats.”
“Well, you can, but you’ll be wrong.”
“Touche.”