{"id":1440,"date":"2011-12-16T08:57:02","date_gmt":"2011-12-16T13:57:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stories.daddytales.com\/?p=1440"},"modified":"2011-12-16T08:57:02","modified_gmt":"2011-12-16T13:57:02","slug":"battle-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2011\/12\/16\/battle-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Battle!"},"content":{"rendered":"

For my birthday this year, I got the kids nerf weapons: a sword and shield for one, a pair of matched long swords for the other. They absolutely love them, and between them and the Ninja game<\/a>, our house has turned into something of a warzone.<\/p>\n

The other morning, my youngest arrived in my bedroom wearing his shield and sword. “Ah-ha!”<\/p>\n

I jumped out of bed, grabbed a pillow, and gave my best barbarian shout. “Aaaaahhhh!”<\/p>\n

The little\u00a0guy backed up a step in surprise and I sprinted out of the room. As he realized I was running away, he started laughing so hard he could barely stand up. Which was good, because I needed the headstart. My oldest was reading on the couch. “I need a sword,”\u00a0I shouted. “Quick! Where are\u00a0your swords?”<\/p>\n

“What?”<\/p>\n

Charging into his room, I didn’t see any weapons at all. “Where are your swords?” I shouted again.<\/p>\n

“Ah-ha!” My youngest had reached the doorway. He struck a suitably dramatic pose: shield up, sword held high.<\/p>\n

I ran out the other door of bedroom. “Sword!” I shouted. “I need a sword!”<\/p>\n

“Behind my bureau!”<\/p>\n

With my youngest hot on my heels, I looped back into the bedroom, found sword, and grabbed it. “Now,” I shouted. “Now, we’ll see!”<\/p>\n

The little guy’s eyes widened. I’m more than twice as tall as he is, and was holding a longer sword. Shield or no, he’s learned the danger of reach. Now it was his turn to run.<\/p>\n

In the living room, he stopped running and took his battle stance.\u00a0I raised my pillow and approached, then stopped when I saw a big smile spread across my opponent’s face.<\/p>\n

“What?” I asked.<\/p>\n

“Ah-ha!” His older brother was standing behind me, holding a nerf dart gun. “We’ll get him together!”<\/p>\n

I jumped sideways so I wasn’t directly between them, then held up my pillow. “Wait!”<\/p>\n

Laughing, my youngest swung his sword.<\/p>\n

I blocked the attack with my sword, but the nerf dart zipped over my pillow and hit me square in the chest.<\/p>\n

As I collapsed to the floor, dead, I had one small consolation: seeing my killers turn on each other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is about as far from a Christmas story as you can get, but I have a feeling this scene will probably be repeating itself throughout the holidays. <\/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":[118,122,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-n","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-ne","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1440","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=1440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}