The Battle of Christmas

One of the many gifts that my boys received on Christmas morning was a pair of Nerf guns. They ooohh’d and aaahh’d at them for a few minutes, fired off a couple of shots and then moved lustfully on to the next present like George Clooney at a speed dating dinner. As we opened the rest of our presents I often glanced enviously at the sleek plastic toys of destruction, my itchy trigger finger begging for a scratching. What I missed amid all the presents was that my wife was apparently casting an equally envious eye at the Nerf hardware.

Sometime in the afternoon when the boys were calmly drawing in their coloring books, my wife loaded one of the Nerf guns and attacked. I quickly grabbed the second weapon and drafted David, my oldest son leaving my wife with Graham. The battle raged throughout the house, David and I would take cover behind couches and doors and at one point in time I think we even tried to duck behind the dog for cover.

I would on occasion find my wife without any ammo, it was at these times that I learned a dark truth about myself. I am perfectly willing and able to shoot an unarmed woman, in fact I actually derived a great deal of pleasure out of it. In those times when I was without ammo, I found myself telling my first born to run out in the open as bait so that we could collect the balls that his Mother shot at him.

While David and I were laying prone behind a couch I looked at him and said “I’ve got a mission for you but it’s a Black Op, do you know what a Black Ops mission is?”
“No,” he replied.
“It’s the kind of mission where you earn medals, but they have to send them to your next of kin,” I explained. “I need you to go find out where Mom is and then report back to me with her position.” David took off running, not even giving me the chance to explain that if he was caught by the enemy I would disavow all knowledge of his mission. “Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do & die.” (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

Pretty soon we had recruited the younger boy to our side too, and I had David feeding me ammo while Graham did reconnaissance to determine my wife’s hiding place. This was short lived however, as Graham was easily swayed by my wife’s use of biological warfare (candy from his stocking) and his mental faculties were rendered useless. He was powerless to resist her chocolatey charms. I would later perform a Code Red (swirly) on the little one for his disloyalty.

The battle ended when David went out to gather more ammo for me. I heard my wife yell “Hey! You cheater, you can’t do that!” and I knew that he was about to make me proud. Sure enough, he came running around the corner carrying my wife’s gun with my wife in hot pursuit. I jumped up and laid down a barrage of suppressing fire, stopping my wife in her tracks and causing her to duck into the office for cover. I set my gun down and hugged my son. He had gone above and beyond the call of duty. Never had I been so proud of him, and never have I been so glad that I have boys.