CURSE YOU, J.K. ROWLING!

Yeah, that's right. I said it. Do you realize, J.K. (if that's your real name) how much your books have hijacked the brains of my (I'll admit it) utterly addled children?

I know I've written about this before, and I've certainly thought about it often, but today was bloody ridiculous. It began when I asked my son to choose his breakfast.

"EXPELLIARMUS!" he cried, pointing at my chest with a chopstick.

"That's very nice," I said. "But what I want you to do is decide between Cheerios-"

"EXPELLIARMUS!" he yelled again, giving the chopstick a jaunty flick.

"or oatmeal," I continued.

"EXPELLIARMUS!"

"Or, if you want-"

"EXPELLIARMUS!"

"I could boil you an egg."

"EXPELLIARMUS! EXPELLIARMUS! EXPELLIARMUS!" He vaulted forward, somersaulting across the kitchen floor, zapping me with his magic spell over his shoulder, then from under his leg, then upside down. He shouted the disarming spell while leaping, lunging and flying through space. He was joyful, intent, and unbridled. He was magic personified.

My eight year old – always a cool customer – was not amused. She extracted her spoon from her cereal and licked it clean. Then, shutting one eye, she pointed her spoon squarely at her brother.

"STUPEFY!" she yelled. Leo froze in mid-air, his face a mask of shock and horror, and fell, senseless to the ground. Deedee humphed, twirled her spoon, blew the tip, and resumed eating.

"It's so easy," she said with her mouth full, "to be in charge of boys."

Leo still didn't move. "Will someone," he mumbled with frozen lips, "please un-stupefy me?" Deedee didn't budge.

"Hermione wouldn't've done, so I won't either." Deedee tucked into her breakfast and re-opened her book, a barely-concealed, un-uttered snicker uncurling across her lips.

I asked Leo later why he didn't just get up – why he waited for his sister to finish eating, brush her teeth, and then un-stupefy him. Leo looked at me like I was nuts.

"How could I have?" he asked. "It's not like I could just break the spell." And he sat down and ate his breakfast and no more magic occurred that day.

DO YOU SEE WHAT YOU HAVE DONE TO US MS ROWLING? Granted, my kids are crazy, but I think the evidence clearly shows that you have made them crazier. And a bit of a challenge to parent.

Perhaps, it's time for me to return to my copy of Defensive Magical Theory and my Standard Book Of Spells (vol 1-7) just to brush up.

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