Gosalyn prowled around her house warily.
"It's quiet, too quiet."
She stared at Noelle on the floor looking at a microscope.
She stared at Honker.
She looked at her daughter again.
"Sometimes I wonder if she is mine or not." Gosalyn laughed.
"What you doing?"
"Research." Noelle beamed and return to looking at her big children's microscope.
"Isn't she so precious?" Honker beamed behind his paper. Gosalyn laughed.
"What kind of research?" Gos continued looking at her.
"Bugs. I find a yucky blue bug in the yard."
"Ewwww." Honker grimaced.
"That's my girl. That thing is so gross." Gosalyn encouraged. "Isn’t it great when you can really relate to your kids, Honk?"
Noelle smiled "Yeah and it has like little horns and stuff on it."
"Boy, that looks good enough to eat. Isn't it Noelle?" she said glancing at her sweating husband
"Yum Yum." Noelle rubbed her tummy. She laughed at her daddy.
Honker tried to continue reading his paper.
"Daddy."
He put down his paper.
"What is it Pumpkin? Gah-"
She stuck the petrie dish in his face
"Can I look at the bug under your real microscope?"
"Umm. Sure honey."
Noelle ran off ahead.
"No honey you’re too little to use the big on by yourself."
Honker tried to look brave "We'll just take the petrie dish to my lab upstairs, and we'll have a long look at it."
"Yay! Let's cut it up so we can see it real good."
Honker tried not to look at the bug in the dish.
Eventually Honker returned down.
"Well Noelle is in bed."
"Chirp Chirp. Honey did you enjoy your midnight snack?"
Honker glared at his wife
"Gos, that’s not funny. I don't like anything with more than four legs." He shivered.
In one of his more machismo moments at college, when Gosalyn came to visit him, he ate a bag of crickets on bet. It made him really popular for about a week. Rumor was he didn’t stop chirping for a week. Gos never let him live it down.
He held his stomach
"Oh poor baby." She kissed his forehead. "Well no one said you weren't brave Honker Muddlefoot."
"Noelle can handle everything. I think if Bigfoot broke down the front door, she'd ask it what it had for breakfast. She has no fear."
"Let's hope it's not rubbing off on Kat. Can you imagine if Kat was like that?"
"Please don't. That would be scary." Gosalyn reasoned"Let's see if we had one child with Noelle's Courage, Kat's imagination and little Ned's cuteness, why that would be the Antichrist wouldn't it?"
"I think it be even worse than you were." "Worse than me." Gosalyn said with mock indignation. "I'll give you worse than me Honker Muddlefoot." she pinched and tickled her husband.
Eventually they walked upstairs. To put the aforementioned Kat (or as she thought of herself Empress of all she surveys), to bed.
They knocked on her door"Upga Upga Um...Don't come in yet!" Kat stuttered.
Possibly the four most horrific words in the English language for a parent to hear. They heard Ned's giggle inside of her room.
"What are you doing to your brother in there?"
Honker asked."Upga Upga Nothing?"
"Kat you open this door or..."Gosalyn didn't even need to raise her voice. The door flung open. A little girl with kinky blond curls and her mother's face opened the door.
Kat was beaming the 'distract-your-parents' smile "Mother Father, how nice of you to visit. Well thanks for stopping by." She tried to close the door.
Gosalyn held the door open and Honker lifted Kat over one shoulder upside
"All right what are you doing to your brother?"
Kat was hanging upside down.
Ned starting singing
"Mommy. Bogodoh Bogodoh. Boo Daddy."
"Katrina Muddlefoot!" Gosalyn shouted at the top of her lungs.
Honker tried not to laugh.
"Begg goe." Ned cried happily.
Ned’s feathers were shorn all over the place. Kat tried to hide the scissors behind her back. It was clear that his dear sister had generously given him a feather cut.
Gosalyn didn't scream, to her credit. She snatched the scissors away from her daughter
"What on Earth possessed you to cut your brother’s feathers?"
"Well um uh, we were playing barber and I didn’t do a good job." Kat said under her breath.
Honker picked up his son and looked at his mangled head.
"Neddy are you okay."
"Daddy, joobboo." Ned hugged his Daddy.
Honker was turning bright red from lack of oxygen.
"I’m going to put Ned to bed. Your mother has to have a long talk with you."
Honker rushed out of the room, and laughed loudly.
Gosalyn stared at her daughter with icy dagger eyes.
She knelt to look her daughter in the eye.
Gosalyn put her hands on Kat’s shoulders, telling herself not to just fling her out the window "Kat, why did you do that?"
"You never told me I couldn’t."
Gosalyn made a noise of utter frustration and gritted her teeth.
"Go to bed." She did not say the implied "before I kill you." But Kat got the message.
"Okay Mommy." Kat said completely forgetting she had done anything. She skipped into her bed humming and pulled up the covers.
Gosalyn counted to 50 and decided.
"We’ll talk about this in the morning." She said completely drained of anger, and now more scared and surprised at her child’s willful stupidity than anything else.
She left Kat’s rubbing her temples.
Honker looked at her and started chuckling, trying to stifle his laughter.
"What is so funny?"
"Nothing." Honker couldn’t breath. Ned was laughing too. Too young to realize how mangled and ugly his hair looked.
"I’m going to out now."
"Okay."
"You can laugh now."
"No it’s not funny. It’s very serious…" Honker was dying trying to not undermine his wife’s dour and stern grimace.
"Laugh go ahead."
"Have a good night Gosalyn." Ned hugged his mom, and Honker kissed her. As she retreated to the ease of a life as a death defying superhero. Boy that was a lot easier...
Gosalyn drove up to her father’s house. He was sitting on the stoop.
She walked up to her father.
Drake smiled at her.
"What did your kids do?"
"How did you know?" Gosalyn said completely drained of all emotional energy.
"There is no other explanation for that look on your face." Drake "You want some coffee and aspirin?"
He led his daughter inside.
"How can she find an excuse for being so stupid and be so smart at the same time?" Gosalyn threw her hands up in the air. "She’s nuts."
"Oh Kat. She’s always up to something." Drake chuckled.
"She’s completely out of her mind. Do you have any idea what she did tonight?" her head plunked against the table.
"Let me guess. She covered your kitchen in mustard."
"What?" Gosalyn lifted her head off the table.
"Yeah to get rid of the termites, because through some scientific method she determined termites didn’t like mustard." Drake said, patting her on the shoulder.
"Well It made sense at the time…" Gosalyn said "If there was mustard on everything…"
"And then you actually responded. 'You never told me I couldn't cover the kitchen in mustard.'" Gosalyn glared at her father. "This is not the-"
"No wait this has something to do with safety. See that bulging vein." Pointing at her forehead. "Did she follow you on case?"
"No."
"Cause I got that huge bulgy vein when you started dressing up as Quiverwing Quack. See?" He pointed to a wrinkle on his forehead "I call this one Quiverwing wrinkle, right here. That ones Making me related to the Muddlefoots' wrinkle, and that little one is being a superhero wrinkle."
"So 75% percent of your face is devoted to me causing you stress when I was little?"
Drake paced around her.
"I know what that look is. Did someone try to make a parachute out of a blanket and jump off the entertainment center?"
"No."
"Did she let a pig into-"
Gosalyn stared at her father "You are enjoying this."
"Gosalyn remember that time you recycled my entire arsenal of Crime Fighting equipment for under 10 bucks. I didn’t want to scare you, but I placed a curse on you."
"That’s not funny."
"It’s taken a while to work, but it did."
"That is not funny."
"And as I told you to ‘Go to bed’ and you went hippidy hopping away to your little bed. Little did I was devising your doom. I meant ‘Go to bed before I kill you.’ "
"I sat in the kitchen for hours plotting and planning on how I could wreak appropriate vengeance. And at midnight just before the clock stroked twelve. I had an idea."
He turned on his Lugosi accent "I cursed you to have a little girl who would one day drive you to the emotional state which leads you here now. BWAHAHAHAHA."
"What time is it now?"
"Eleven forty seven at night. Patrol was so slow tonight."
The two looked at each other.
"I think I’m going to try this curse."
"Good. I’ll go get the salt."
They had finally assembled all the ingredients. As the clock struck twelve they began enacting the curse.
Gosalyn shook salt on a sheet of paper with Kat’s name.
"Now you blow off the salt." Drake said.
Gosalyn blew a gust of air that knocked salt all over the place.
"Katrina Muddlefoot."
"Use the accent." Drake said.
"Katrina Muddlefoot." She said in a creepy Transylvanian accent. "I curse you to have a little girl who will drive you out of your mind."
"Now laugh."
"BWAAHAHAHAHa." Gosalyn laughed maniacally.
Drake joined her and soon they were falling over they were laughing so hard.
"Thanks Dad for teaching me this curse."
"And the best thing is, it’s one hundred percent fool proof."
Gosalyn crossed her legs.
"But I think it’s the best curse in the world." Drake said ruffling her hair.
"Now lets go clean up this curse." Gosalyn said cheerfully.
30 years later.
A very angry woman sat in her kitchen with her mother.
Her mother laughed and instructed her
"Now right his name on a sheet of paper and then you say… and remember to use the accent…