Mummy?
Yes, dear?
Can we watch the document’ry ‘bout the children who haven’t any toys again, please?
No, Timmy, Aunt Agatha is going to show us a slide show of stills featuring the burning oil fields of Iraq while your cousin Mathilda plays Prince’s “Purple Rain” on the flute.
Oh, but Mummy, we did that for Christmas last year.
Yes, Timmy. We call these repetitive events “traditions” and we do them to orient ourselves in the world in order to gain meaning in our lives.
But I want to watch the African children with no toys.
*Sigh* You know very well that we do that on Halloween.
Jenny at school told me her family sometimes watches two movies at Christmas. She says that both of them are about happy things. Can we do that this year?
This family will never watch movies and we shall never celebrate happiness through fiction or myth. That’s what led to the nuclear arms race which nearly led to the obliteration of all of humanity.
What are the two of you little slogginses going on about.
Oh, Agatha, it’s just Timmy. He’s rambling about African children with no toys and propaganda about happiness.
Dear me, that is frightful. Timmy, what on earth has gotten into you this year?
I don’t know. It’s not that something’s gotten into me, though, I don’t think. Oh, you meant that as a metaphor. Well, I don’t know why, but I don’t want to watch the slideshow of oil fires for Christmas.
What is this, lad?
Don’t overreact, Agatha. It’s not unknown for a boy to display misogynistic behaviors before puberty, especially during the seasons that present existential challenges for those with penises.
Perhaps if you hadn't stopped homeschooling.
Yes, but that only begs the question: Is it nature or nurture for boys to hate girls and want to rape their mothers?
I should say it’s neither lest there’s something of a psychopath brewing.
Oh, no, Agatha, we’re not having this argument again. You know very well that I spent four years in the Antarctic studying spores. The science is incontrovertible! Males are uniformly psychopaths who can only acquire empathy through a childhood of rigorous and ceaseless exposure to documentary filmmaking and other visual arts somberly portraying death, destruction, and famine.
Yes, I’m very aware of your failed dissertation.
Failed? By a sexist postcolonial university run by sociopathic ethnocentrists!
It was Tufts.
Precisely. I won’t sit here and listen to this claptrap any longer. Do you see the look in Timmy’s eyes? He’s practically erect thinking of how he might rape me while strangling you. Your behavior is appalling and your speech is littered with eighteenth-century European ideas about race and class.
Mummy?
Yes, dear?
Does this mean we can watch the document’ry ‘bout the children who haven’t any toys?
Absolutely. Agatha, get the hell out of my house and take your latent Protestant values with you. And, Mathilda, stop playing the flute. All you're doing is learning how to suck cock from the side!
