manda . r a i

SARCASTIC ESSAY FOUR

I turn around to leave them all. Just as I do, I hear that awful crying start up again. My gosh, how annoying. "What?!" I scream at her. She only looks at me with these big old puppy dog eyes and wipes her tears away. Argh, this is just great. I can sense what's going to happen. I'm going to get stuck entertaining these little beasts. And sure enough, what happens, my mother comes poking her head into the room saying "Entertain them, would ya?" I nod and try to interest them in a tape or something. They should all like The Little Mermaid right? I put it in, and Jennifer's sister starts crying again. I swear that kid's got some overactive tear ducts or something. "What?!" I ask her.

"I don't like The Little Mermaid!" She sobs. "I wanna watch 101 Dalmations!" Oh great, the one tape we don't have she wants to watch.

"No! Let's watch The Land Before Time!" James yells. Allen joins in, "Dinosaurs! Dinosaurs! Dinosaurs! Land Before Time! Land before Time!" They start hopping around the room screaming that all the while pretending they were dinosaurs. "ROAR! ROAR! RaAaAR!" Jennifer's sister starts crying again. My sisters join in with their whining about wanting to watch The Lion King. Jennifer even comes in the room and starts whining about all the whining. And so does Jo. Oh boy, is this going to be fun or what? I try to calm everyone down by making them sit on the bed and raising their hands when they want to speak. Of course that doesn't work. All that happens is more screaming as they fight about who raised their hands first and whatnot. So I shush everyone and make them watch Titanic. That should put them to sleep. They start complaining again, but by now I'm half deaf, and I don't care much anymore anyways. I already have the world's biggest headache, how much worse can it get? I shut the door to their screaming and yelling and complaining and hope that Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet can bore them enough in three hours to put them to bed. Even though they just woke up, it might just work. Of course I'll have to check back later to fast forward through the bad parts. Or else I'll have to put up with a bunch of "ewww" remarks. I wander back to the kitchen to find Mikel and his family there. Finally! Someone to talk to in all this chaos. Awesome, a partner in crime for me. Now it's two against seven.

An hour and a half later we go upstairs to check on the little critters. Lo and Behold! The magic of Jack and Rose worked. They're all sound asleep. I would've thought they would want to stay up to see all the people dying so they can laugh at them. Oh well. Must've been too early for them to be fully awake anyways. We turn off the VCR and wander back to the kitchen, careful not to wake any of them up. Dude, can't wait till dinner time when everyone has to wake up again.

Dinnertime. The best time of the day, I'm sure. I get stuck at the little children's table to monitor and supervise them. Woohoo. Mikel's my co-supervisor. The children are all fighting over who has the better looking chicken. Who talks about chicken anyways? "My drumstick is better than your drumstick! Mines is fatter!" "No! Mines is better!" "No! MINES!" "NO! MINES!!" "BAM! BAM! I'm hitting you with my drumstick! Hahahaha!" I am slowly getting deafer and deafer.
Opening presents! It's our tradition to open presents on Christmas Eve and not Christmas morning. And we have to wait until all the adults are done eating. Now, if there are many adults, then it takes literally forever for them to finish eating! An average formal dinner with let's say seven people take about two hours in my family to finish. Now with all these people over at dinner, it'll take probably eight hours to finish, seriously, because they have to talk and everything. Naturally we kids were finished in only like half an hour. The rest of the time we just bugged the adults, telling them to hurry up and stuff. Finally after what seemed like forever, they said, "Okay get the cameras out!" Picture taking... what fun. My sister scrambles to go find the camera while I herd the kids to the Christmas tree. I take charge giving people their presents. I don't want some little brat screwing up anything. My father gets the camera ready and I start hanging out the presents. The kids don't even wait for my dad to tell them to smile and take a picture. They're onto those presents faster than vultures on dead antelope. You should see them, you really should. Give them a present, and a split second later the wrapping paper is gone. Then you hear either "Yes!!!" or you don't hear anything at all, meaning they don't care much for the present. I only got five presents. One from each family. They were all small too, and they just gave me money to make up for it. What fun. I'd rather get gifts than money. I don't know what to spend my money on. But I still smile and say thank you like I really love it. Adults like that. I don't even think they buy you presents because they care about you, they buy them just to show that they have the money.

Day Fourteen. The last day. We've sent some people to the airport already and we're sending the rest of them to the airport. So sad to see all my little cousins go. I'll really miss them, until next year at least. Ha, yeah right. On the drive home I think about how awesome it is to get my room back for the rest of break. Then I remember that there's only two more days of break left. Oh what fun. So much for winter vacation.

>> the end

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