A Road Less Travelled

So, recently Seth has been interested in improvisational theater. He found a book at the Bradley library about how and why to do improv. This has made life rather entertaining around here. At least, I think it has. Perhaps someone should ask Crystal what she thinks.

The book Seth read even has some exercises to help practice your ability to be interesting on the spur of the moment. One of the exercises in called Expert. One person thinks up some wacky, off-the-wall thing and then interviews the other person who pretends to be an expert on the subject. For example, I say “Seth, tell me, is it difficult to extract walrus tusks?” He says, “I’m glad you asked. When I first got into the field of tusk extraction I didn’t have many tools for the job…” and so on. Or, to pick another perfectly hypothetical example, Seth says, “Today on our show I will be interviewing Gabrielle Ben-Ezra, the leading expert in knitting with steel. So, Gabrielle, how did you get into the field of steel knitting?” Now, this is all very well and good, but sometimes you just want to have a conversation about something without the burden of a full blown interview. So we have adapted this exercise so that I will just be holding something and Seth will ask me, “Gabrielle, what is that?” And I will come up with some bizarre object and what it’s for such as, “This is my nose snapper. I collect noses you know.”

So last night the Lansberrys came over for dinner. Seth, Theresa and Raquel had already had a conversation about improv and some of the exercises. Theresa and Raquel both thought it sounded like fun. James on the other hand just thinks we are weird. Actually, I think he thinks that pretty much about everything. And Crystal, as usual, just watched with an air of amused detachment.

Right before dinner started Seth accidentally put something under the table which was very hard to kill. Seth tired to kill it with his crossbow, but I think it was some sort of slime monster, so that didn’t work. We managed to blow it up with the pin from a grenade and then dinner started. Somewhere in the middle of dinner Raquel asked if there was any more water in the pitcher. There was, but there was also a live beaver. When Seth tried to get it out he only got half of the beaver out so he had half a live beaver in his hand and there was half a live beaver in the jar. We managed to fish it out, but what does one do with two halves of a live beaver that rapidly change from ‘live’ to ‘not live’? We fed it to Justice who thought that was really cool. In fact, after I finally passed to water on to Raquel Justice cried until we brought it back and he could pretend to put something in it. Or maybe he was taking something out. Anyway, he was playing with us which is more than I can say about some people.

But the best part of the evening was after dinner. We’d cleared the table and I thought that we should take the leaf out to make it easier to maneuver in the dining room. So I unclipped the clasps on my side of the table and asked Theresa and Raquel, who were on the other side of the table, to unclip that side. Theresa then cleared off the glasses people were still using and flipped the table up on its side. She claimed that she was trying to find the clasps, but I know better. Seth had just put a basket on his head which looked like some demented sort of helmet so we decided he was in some kind of army. Naturally, this means that I am on the other side of the fight. So Seth leaped behind the table with Theresa and Raquel and I ducked out of the room and began returning fire first. We had a splendid little firefight between the dining room and the breakfast room. My weapons got bigger and bigger, but their fortifications were far more advanced than mine. I finally went down to whatever Raquel was firing (we don’t know what it was, but it made a cute, little ‘Pew!’ noise) and I died dramatically after throwing my last grenade. And then we all stood up and pretended we were mature adults.