Disclaimer: I do not own "Modern Family" or any of the characters mentioned in the series. This fanfic takes place late in season five.
It was a beautiful spring Friday morning in Los Angeles and the Dunphys had just risen and were getting ready for their day. Alex and Haley were sat at the breakfast bar while Claire, Phil, and Luke sat at the dining table. The family began eating the breakfast that Claire had prepared in the kitchen: whole grain waffles with nuts for protein and fruit salad. Alex and Luke had school, Haley had college, and Phil had work.
"How about we play ping pong this evening?" suggested Phil. "It'll be fun. Last time, we did kids against adults. This time, we should do girls against boys."
"That's not fair," said Luke. "The girls would win because Alex always cheats."
"Do not!" the middle Dunphy child chimed in. "You just can't accept that I'm good at ping pong."
"I could see Alex pulling special balls out of her pocket," said the eldest Dunphy child.
"I bite my thumb at thee," said Alex, as she put her thumb in her mouth.
"How mature!" said Haley. "A high school junior, sucking her thumb."
"How about we do a rematch tonight?" said Phil. "I'll pick up some colored balls so nobody cheats."
"I'd love to," said Alex. "But don't you remember? I'm going to that Clint Samurakami lecture at UCLA tonight." The middle Dunphy child was very excited. She'd been planning to see this lecture for a month. She bought his book, "Furusato," and read through it once. Then she read it again to take notes and to come up with several poignant questions to ask. Samurakami, a second-generation Japanese-American, has just received his masters in anthropology. He decides to spend a year in Japan to become fluent in Japanese while living with relatives in Japan's Mino prefecture. As he starts getting used to living there, his archaeological education takes effect. Instead of living like an American tourist is Japan, he adopts the ways of the people with whom he's living.
"I'm got a party tonight," announced Haley.
"Don't tell me you're going to get arrested again for underage drinking!" exclaimed Phil.
"No," said Haley. "Don't worry. It's just going to be a... a dinner party."
Alex quipped, "So you're saying that you're going to get eaten out?"
"Hey!" said Phil. "Alex, what is it with you and saying dirty things at the dinner table? I'm fed up with not being able to finish my meal. Just yesterday at dinner, you had to describe the rat trying to mate with a deceased mate in the boiler room."
"I'm sorry, dad, mom, Haley, Luke!" said the nerdy Dunphy girl.
"Alex," said Claire, sternly. "This has been going on for far too long. There is going to be a consequence for this." Alex listened, attentively. "You're not going to that lecture tonight. Instead, you're going to the party with Haley."
"What?!" said the two Dunphy daughters, in unison.
Alex was mad. "So between going to an anthropology lecture and going to a kegger..."
"It's not a kegger!" Haley clarified.
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks," Luke quoted Hamlet.
Alex continued, angrily, "you want me going to the kegger?!"
"What I want is to have pleasant conversations at the dinner table," explained Claire. "So if teaching you to be pleasant means you're spending an evening at a get-together among people you don't connect with, then so be it."
A light-bulb turned on in Alex's head. "So instead of going to an anthropology lecture, you want me to practice anthropology. You want me to try to experience the party through Haley's eyes."
"That's correct," said Phil.
"Daddy," announced Alex, "May I borrow your credit card? Because I have nothing to wear to this party."
"You can say that again," said Haley.
Phil could see where this was going. "Honey, why don't you just go to the anthropology lecture?"
"No!" said Claire, sternly. "Babe, you're disrespecting my parenting. We need to be stern on this. Otherwise, the kids will just walk all over us." So Phil handed Alex his credit card, who put the card securely in her purse.
Meanwhile, in a messy kitchen with Greek letters hung on the wall, a shirtless 20-something muscular blond guy sat at a table with a plate of cold pizza and a can of energy drink in front of him. He had a tattoo on his lower back of a brown bear wearing a baseball uniform with a light blue jersey and white pants with a giant gold number one on the shirt. He dialed his phone and began to speak. "Hi, it's Liam. I wanna put $200 on the Bruins for Sunday night." He hung up and the Joe Bruin tattoo lit up and came to life; it looked like an animated image. Then, next to the table an adorable bear cub appeared, wearing a similar baseball uniform. It had a fully formed set of bear fangs.