My Life’s Work

Senior Elf on the Shelf Mover-Arounder

A job that not only comes with a super-fancy title, but also includes bizarrely random shift work, often including panicked reporting for duty in the middle of the night, and no money whatsoever.

Now I know that you are wondering how you too can make absolutely no money from home while working for your children being your own boss.  I will tell you how!

Refuse to let one of those weaselly elves into your house, but cave like a house of cards when your child sees the enormous display of elves in the store.

Spend a month playing the elf game and put it away in a “safe place” on Christmas Eve.  Be unable to find it the following year and face the prospect of shelling out more money for another asshole in a red suit elf.

Find the elf in the box where you hide all the kids’ teeth.  Try to fish the elf out of the box without taking down from the jenga-like structure that you have built on your bedroom closet shelf.  Drop the box, launching a dozen human teeth through the air.  Fight the urge to vomit all over the elf.

Place the elf in an elaborate pinterest-worthy scene on an unoriginal shelf.

On the very first day in a moment of before-school mania find yourself saying “Well I don’t think Polka is going to want to come back tomorrow after such disrespectful behaviour.”

Forget to move the elf the second night.

Listen to your children cry and worry all day because they are convinced that someone touched the elf and killed it.  Seriously consider burying it in a shoebox in the backyard, with a tiny gravestone reading “And this is why we can’t have nice things.”

Buy a skirt for the elf.  Spend several hours contemplating what has happened to your sad life.

Really feel yourself spiraling when you realize that you are writing after midnight on a Friday night about a doll that looks like a cross between a creepy clown and the star of a cautionary after-school special.