(scene opens at the top of the stairs, furniture pushed onto the landing)
Me: What is this?
Gamma: (briskly exiting her room) I’m just doing a bit of cleaning.
Me: (somewhere between shock and confusion)
Gamma: (hands over a clipboard) I’ve come to some decisions about what I want my room to look like.
(camera cuts to clipboard)
Me: Uh, okay.
Gamma: You probably should talk it over with dad.
Me: Sure. I’ll do that. (slowly backs away, exits scene)
(scene opens in dinning room, Beta shuffles in)
Me: (looks up from laptop) Good morning! Glad to be back home?
Beta: (groggy) Yes.
Me: Tell me what else you did at Sea Base? I want all the stories.
Beta: Well, we were on that primitive island and you get a chuck box. There’s the ‘Chuck Box Challenge’.
Me: Oh dear. I know where this is going.
Beta: (warming to tale) So, the challenge is that you have to eat everything you packed in. We didn’t have much time left so I look in the box and pull out the maple syrup and chug it.
Me: (starts laughing) Ohmigod. Go tell your father.
Beta: Why?
Me: I think he might be proud of you.
(time passes, cut scene to later, Husband walks into dinning room)
Me: Did Beta tell you about the food challenge?
Husband: Yes. I told him he should have put the maple syrup on something. Like an apple.
Me: Oh yeah? What’d he say?
Husband: Said that’s what Alpha did.
Me: (proud) I love our knuckleheads.
