When Focuses Collide

Scene: the Treehouse family room.  AMELIA is working on four or five sewing projects at once. DAD is channel-surfing. He pauses on some shoot-em-up movie; the hero has just been shot in the shoulder.

 

AMELIA: Writers love that soft spot just below the shoulder joint.

DAD: What?

AMELIA: It’s really handy. You can inflict a torso wound without hitting anything important.  Looks dire but they’ll be fine.

DAD: No important things?  There’s all sorts of important things there!  Muscles, tendons, nerves …

AMELIA: Well, yeah, you do some damage, but the idea is that you can still impale a character or stab or bite or shoot ’em and it’ll look like they’re in real trouble but they can still talk to you before going into shock, and they’ll probably get better.

DAD: Ah. No guts?

AMELIA: Yeah.

DAD: … But you’d still have trouble with rotation …

AMELIA: Hey, man, I didn’t say they were all good writers.

Advent Calendar ~ Day 18!

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home?

The past four years have been traveling back home from school for Christmas—either from Oregon or all the damn way from Kenya.  (36 straight hours of travel with a GI infection.  I am hardcore.) Now since I’m already here, I just stay.

Lwaxana? NO!

Computer! I never thanked you for the Tea! Earl Grey! Hot!

And now, alas, it is too late.