{"id":1220,"date":"2011-05-30T09:20:46","date_gmt":"2011-05-30T14:20:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stories.daddytales.com\/?p=1220"},"modified":"2011-05-30T09:20:46","modified_gmt":"2011-05-30T14:20:46","slug":"the-barbarian-queen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2011\/05\/30\/the-barbarian-queen\/","title":{"rendered":"The Barbarian Queen"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Quick background note: One of the boys’ favorite aunts likes to be “bad.” She burps, tells them\u00a0mildly inappropriate jokes and encourages them to misbehave. It’s a small wonder she’s their favorite. For the purposes of this tale, I’ll call her Aunt H.]<\/em><\/p>\n

This morning I came down from\u00a0my office to discover the boys and some friends eating pancakes outside in a giant blanket fort. I poked my head in to say hi. Of the four kids, only the youngest was eating with a fork.<\/p>\n

“Wow,” I said smiling at her. “Look at you, all grown up and eating with a fork.”<\/p>\n

She beamed back at me.<\/p>\n

“Yeah,” my second-grader said, “but all the boys are eating with their fingers!”<\/p>\n

“‘Cause she’s a lady and you’re all barbarians,” I said.<\/p>\n

He nodded, then turned to his friends. “You know what a barbarian is? It’s someone who doesn’t care about the law. It’s a bad guy.”<\/p>\n

I shook my head. “Not always. It could just be someone who doesn’t care about manners.”<\/p>\n

“Oh,” he said. “Like Aunt H!”<\/p>\n

“Yeah!” his younger brother said, waving a pancake in the air. “We’re barbarians!”<\/p>\n

“Sometimes,” my oldest said to his friends. “My daddy is a barbarian, too. In fact, he used to be a barbarian all the time!”<\/p>\n

Happy Memorial Day, Aunt H.<\/p>\n

It’s good to be a barbarian.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s good to be a barbarian.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[123,118,120,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-cute","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-embarassing","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-jG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}