I should have stood in bed

You can see it coming. You can see it coming from the moment you fall out of bed late in the morning when the alarm clock fails to ring, stub your toe on the way to the shower, blast yourself with cold water by mistake, finally discover your car keys under that pile of Bre-X shares on your desk and then forget to push the button for the garage door opener as you back the car out. 

While you expect to run into the occasional "slippery"spot on the cow path of life, there are days when you find yourself in it up to the knees. And there's nothing you can do but keep plowing ahead, hoping to eventually get through the remaining hellish hours, or perhaps more humanely, get hit by a truck somewhere along the way. 

Of course, on one of those days, you're more likely to get hit by an armored truck as it spills hundreds of thousands of dollars from its open back door over your shattered corpse. 

I've just had one of those days. 

So don't mess with me. 

I won't get into how the day went at work. Beyond only doing about half of what I had hoped to do, battling with obstinate computers which seem to have taken on a new arrogance since Deep Blue beat Kasparov, and being needled by my co-workers all day just because I forgot what the date was, things went rather smoothly. 

You expect this kind of stuff to happen at work. That's why they call it work. 

But when you get home, you expect things to settle down a bit. 

They didn't. 

Because I had gotten behind at work, I thought I might be able to catch up on the computer at home. That is, after all, why Ihave a computer in the first place. Well that and Starcraft. 

But my son had other plans, plans which included two of his friends noisily playing in the living room while I labored in the adjoining office/computer/toyroom. 

I tried to ignore them. But ignoring kindergarten-aged kids is about as pointless as standing under Niagara Falls with an umbrella.

Every 35 seconds, one or more of them would run screeching into the room chased, or chasing an equally noisy accomplis. 

Occasionally, they would interrupt my work with a request."Kin I have some juice." was a popular one, as was, "Whatchadoin?" 

Finally, the little girl from next door, an angelic tot with lovely blonde locks, decided to stand beside my chair and stare at me while I thumped and hammered at the keyboard. 

"Is there something you need," I asked. 

"Nope," she said, still staring. 

"I think the others are playing in the living room,"I offered. 

"Yep," she said still staring. 

I tried to go back to work, but it was impossible. 

I stopped typing and turned toward the child, who was,of course, still staring. 

"Go away." 

"Nope," she said. 

"No, I'm serious," I said. "Really. Go away." 

"I don't have to," 

Let me say here, that I'm not a particularly nasty man. But I had just come through a particularly nasty day, and was frankly feeling particularly, well, nasty. 

I controlled my tone at least, but I imagine it would have been hard at that time to tell the difference between my face and a beet. 

"When you are in my house," I intoned dramatically,"You will do as I say. And when I say go away, that means you will immediately, and without hesitation, GO AWAY!" 

She went away. 

But I knew that I had just turned from "Bob-next-door"into "that nasty old poop". 

Undaunted, I resumed my labors. 

But my son was next. 

"Pick a number between one and ten, " he said, standing beside the desk with his other best friend. 

"Five," I said still typing. 

"No, no, no. One we can guess." 

I stopped. "All right, I have a number. Guess quickly."

"Six," offered my son. 

"Eleven" said his friend. 

"No, it has to be between one and ten." I said.

My son's friend paused in thought. 

"Ten" he said. 

"No," I said. "Between one and ten, not at one and ten, not beyond one and ten, not anywhere near 100, or even anything beyond that, meaning that 200 is right out. Understand? It's just between one and ten. OK?" 

"Seven," he said. 

I was amazed. He had hit it dead on. 

"That's. . ., that's right," I stammered. Suddenly, my son stormed from the room in a fury. His friend followed. 

I went back to work. 

Then my wife came in. 

"When do those games go back to the video store,"she asked. 

I don't remember exactly what I said. 

But I do know that I should really learn to control myself more. 

I can only remember the door closing behind her rather abruptly. 

I'm alone in the house now. 

My work is done 

Everyone is asleep. 

And I'm alone in the house. 

Why can't I just shut up?