Butch & Sundance — Part Two

“Who drank the orange juice!?!” That was the frantic call that pierced the morning stillness at my house this morning.

Evidently, my wife had purchased a gallon of orange juice yesterday that she had planned to take (in its entirety) to school this morning for a teachers breakfast. Whoever would have thought that teachers eat breakfast? Back when I was in high school, I thought that they subsisted off of Pepsi and cigarettes in the Teachers’ Lounge.

Being the man of the house, I decided it was my job to take the hit for the rest of the family and admitted to possibly having a small glass of orange juice before I went to bed last night. That’s just the kind of caring, do-anything-for-my-family kind of guy that I am. That and the fact that I think that had a small glass of orange juice before I went to bed last night.

But the more that I think about it, I could have easily blamed the opened container on something, or someone else. A sinister form of evil has taken over my house during the past couple of weeks. Strange things are occurring in the middle of the night. A diabolical kind of darkness has descended upon our humble abode turning our once peaceful, tranquil home into a den of chaos and destruction.

That’s right, the elves are back.

Last year, I wrote about how our happy domicile was turned upside down by the dreaded “Elf on a Shelf.” In our case, there are two “Elves on Shelves” that I have appropriately nicknamed Butch and Sundance after the Oscar-winning movie about the two wild-west gunslinging bank robbers. Trust me, they have earned those nicknames.

Last year they pulled fairly harmless pranks. This year they seem to be more ominous. They have kidnapped my daughter’s dolls, they have haphazardly hung her socks on the Christmas tree, they even made a foray into her underwear drawer which my daughter believed was a line that should not have been crossed. I thought all of these escapades were hilarious.

But then the little demons started to mess with my stuff. One morning I woke up to all of my shoes tied together and stretched out across the living room floor like a train. One of the elves was riding in the engine compartment while the other was being transported in the caboose. Since, on most days, I still sometimes need help tying my shoes, this development could be considered somewhat devastating to my estimated workplace arrival times.

And then, on Tuesday morning, we awoke to a terrible sight. At first we didn’t see what the two little pranksters had done during the night. They were nowhere to be found. It was not a good feeling.

And then my daughter pointed to the kitchen counter and said in a hollow voice, “There they are.” This is almost too horrific of a scene to describe, but I will try my best.

Our family likes cheese balls. Well, more importantly, I like cheese balls. You know, those little balls of puffed whatever covered in a fine cheese-like coating that turn your fingers orange that go great as either a snack while you’re watching television or as an entire meal as you’re watching television. My wife had bought this huge, approximately 50 gallon vat of cheese balls that sits in a transparent plastic container on the kitchen counter. It is located in a convenient spot where I can grab a couple of the delicious treats whenever I pass by. That morning, it was the scene of the crime.

Within that transparent plastic canister sat the two holiday scoundrels atop my tasty cheese balls, grinning at me through a tawny haze of cheese-like dust. Apparently, they had gotten in there sometime during the night and had been chowing down on my snacks! “It had to be them, there’s no way that I could have eaten that many!”, I told my wife as she stood there rolling her eyes. The more that I think about it, I’ll bet that fresh orange juice would be the perfect thirst-quencher after consuming 4 pounds of cheese balls!

As I sit here at my computer today, contemplating an orange juiceless, cheese ball-less Friday night, I’m getting sad. Seasonal depression is a terrible thing, especially when it’s caused by malicious elves and thirsty teachers.

But I want to say this to Butch and Sundance. I hope you’re enjoying yourselves. I hope that you’re having fun with your little pranks now because I can’t help but think that there’s a Bolivian army in your future.

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