Teenage Rebel Run Amok!

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," and may the faeries help me today!

Alas and alack! My oldest daughter, The Heir, has run away!

A nasty troll showed up in my comments section about a week ago, and he foretold that my views would ruin my children. Oh, woe is me! How right he was! (pun intended)

Yesterday started out innocently enough. The Heir and I came home about the same time, she from school and me from goats. We exchanged our usual pleasantries.

I said, "Hey, beaut" (I call her "beaut"), "I put a bottle of Dobra Voda water from that water-judging contest in the fridge this morning. Would you bring me up a glass? I have to type some notes."

If you remember from the last post, I was a judge at an international water-tasting contest over the weekend.

I didn't think I got any of the sparkling Silver Medal Dobra Voda from the enchanted isle of Macedonia. I thought my Dobra Voda was just plain old spring water.

What a fool I am. What a horrible parent!

Spare was a no-show with the water. So I go downstairs, and - gasp! - she's chugging it straight from the bottle. And it was the silver medal sparkling!

Well, you know how it is with kids. You give them a little seltzer here, a club soda there, a splash of Perrier, especially when they're too young to drive. But my precious daughter had just leaped into the Big Leagues of sparkling water without any warning!

In a flash I was on her, wrestling for the bottle. Of course she didn't stand a chance. You can imagine the kind of upper body strength a goat judge totes around. But as I wrenched the Dobra Voda from her grip, OH NO! It spilled all over the floor!

The Heir's eyes blazed. "Now look what you've done!" she yelled.

"I didn't do it, blast you!" I replied. "Who said you could help yourself to sparkling water? You're only sixteen!"

"I'll be seventeen next month, you old geezer!" she sneered. "And if I can't have all the top-notch spring water I want in this house, then I'm going to Romania!"

Readers, I thought she was kidding. Up the stairs she went, down she came with her passport and her parka. Out the door she flew, slamming it behind her.

I thought, "I'll give her a few minutes to calm down."

Big mistake.

She went to her bank, closed out her savings account, took a cab to the airport, and was last seen buying a ticket to Prague.

I have a cousin who lives there who will only be too glad to corrupt her entirely by taking the train with her to Bucharest and from there deep into the Carpathian Mountains, where she will become a sparkling water junkie!

How could this have happened? She was such a wonderful kid, an honor student, a poet and filmmaker, a deep thinker. And I led her astray with bubbling water. Me, the parent she looked to for guidance and direction in her life!

So it just goes to show that if you keep faeries in your house and worship a Goddess and pray at springs, and extol the Sacred Thunderbirds, you are absolutely going to lead your kids to rack and ruin, and have no one but yourself and your horrible pagan religion to blame.

Just Kidding!

Truth is, The Heir and I were both pleasantly surprised to find the Dobra Voda to be sparkling, we shared it amiably, and she went off to study her Spanish, and I went off to type my goat notes. It's an awful strange thing, but both of my daughters seem to be growing into fine young women. Maybe it's genetic on their dad's side.

FROM ANNE
THE MERLIN OF BERKELEY SPRINGS
Always welcoming readers from Down Under! Hey, try that Tasmanian rain water! It never hits the ground!