The Wrecking Crew
by Wesley Steinberg

I am a labour vampire. I work by night and rest by day. At least I try to rest by day. In the summer, with the kids home, it's almost impossible to get anything more than three or four "bat-naps" throughout the day! My oldest daughter usually disappears by NOON, leaving the house in the clutches of my young minions. They are in charge of keeping my rest unspoiled while my nearly-dead body is kept from the devastating light of the sun--and the phone! They must protect my rest. But they don't! They keep waking me up! What kind of minions do that to their Master?

"Listen to the Children of the Night. What a beautiful sound they make."

Dracula never had to put up with his children of the night shouting outside his coffin-room window at the top of their voices while he was trying to sleep. Nor did he have to listen to his dog barking incessantly at his minions playing on the front lawn of his castle. Otherwise he'd be far less poetic and a whole lot grumpier! And you'd think that once the Master has risen from his box and yelled at his minions, they would stop their malicious play. No. They lie in wait for the moment their Master returns to his dark slumber, then they begin noisily re-arranging their living quarters to suit their needs of the moment.

Play is great. Kids get a lot out of role-playing. It helps hone the imagination to a fine edge. But the key word here is imagination. You don't need many "things" to make your imagination work. The power of your mind does it all. My minions...ah, girls are different. They need "everything" to make their imaginations work! Their toys--all of them--to give depth to their imaginary world. The furniture, re-arranged wildly to depict whatever jungle scene they may find themselves in. Their clothes, clean or dirty, thrown about to depict people who inhabit their world where only destruction rules. I always thought females could imagine better than males. My girls must have skipped a few genes!

So what's a tired vampire...ah, father to do? What controls the involuntary "yelling" command in his brain to take one look at his kids' bedroom and the massive destruction which is displayed therein and verbally explode? And when he sees the carnage taking place in the living room right before his blood-shot eyes, his kids' unspoken "I didn't do it!" written all over their faces, how can he keep his mind from leaving his body for a few hundred years?

"What are you kids doing? And what have you done to your bedroom?"

"We're playing."

"What? Thermal Nuclear War? Your dressers are lying on the floor, the drawers empty. The clothes which once lay peacefully inside them are now spread across the floor like Miracle Whip! I found the hamster loose in your closet, chewing on one of your socks! And you've got the living room couch and chairs re-arranged like prairie settlers preparing for an Indian attack! Why did you do it? Why did you wake me up after only two hours? Why, minions? Why?"

"We were playing, Dad!"

Arrrggghhh! Sometimes I wonder how long the summer will last. I'd really like to stop summer from coming, like some modern-day Grinch out to steal summer vacations from little kids everywhere. Someone once suggested I send my kids to summer camp. It wouldn't work. I'd still hear them. And the bill for camp repairs would probably bankrupt me and destroy our now-thriving economy. I just couldn't do that to an unsuspecting world.

"Please hurry, School! I need some rest."
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