Lois on the Warpath Part 2
"Huh?" Reese said. Am I going crazy, or did Mom just say something about this being military school? He thought to himself.
"I said, welcome to military school. Your father and I want to show you what military school is like," Lois smiled at her second eldest son wickedly.
"Why?" asked Reese.
"You're too wild. If you don't settle down, we'll ship you off to Marlin Academy as soon as you're old enough. So we thought we would show you what it be like if you were to go to Marlin Academy. First of all, you don't get to pick your own clothes. Go back into your room, and put on your blue suit," announced Lois.
"The dead suit? Are you crazy?" Reese was astonished.
"Yes the 'dead suit'. And if ever say anything like that to your mother again, you will be in very big trouble, mister! You do not call your family members, or anyone else for that matter, crazy!" Hal admonished, setting his newspaper down.
"Okay, okay, I'll change." Reese stomped back into his room, and put on his "dead suit", tie, and dress shoes. He felt like a nerd, a freak, and an idiot all rolled into one.
Reese marched unhappily back into the kitchen, where he sat down at the table. "What's for breakfast?"
"If you want breakfast, you may cook it yourself," answered Lois.
"But I don't know how to cook."
"Too bad." Lois grinned at him.
"Mom? Aren't you being just a tad harsh?" Malcolm asked.
"Reese needs to learn his lesson." Lois continued with her breakfast, and smirked at Reese standing helplessly by the refrigerator.
Okay Reese, calm down. You can make your own breakfast. How hard can it be? You can make toast. All you have to do is take a piece of bread, and put it in the toaster. But how long do I keep it in for? Hmmm, I don't want it to be undercooked, so lets say…25 minutes! Reese smiled as he put the toast into the toaster, proud that he had been able to figure out how to make toast all by himself.
17 minutes later, Lois sniffed the air suspiciously. "What's that smell?"
"I don't know. I think it's coming from the toaster," replied Dewey.
"Is that smoke?" Malcolm inquired.
"I think so." Lois looked wildly around the room to see where the smoke was coming from.
"OHMIGOD! THE TOASTER'S ON FIRE!" screamed Dewey. The rest of the family leapt into action.
Lois grabbed Hal's mug of coffee and dumped it onto the toaster in an attempt to quench the fire. The flames jumped higher. "Hal!" Lois shrieked. "It's 9:00 in the morning! Why are you drinking?!"
Before Hal had time to respond, Malcolm had calmly turned of the toaster, removed the toast, and doused it with water. The smell of the smoke remained, but the fire was out.
"Reese, clean up the kitchen." Lois handed him a sponge.
"But Mom-"
"No buts! Clean it up! Now!" Lois grabbed Hal's arm, and dragged him into their bedroom. "Hal, maybe this whole military school thing was a big mistake."
"So what are you going to do? Give up? Let him win? You have to be strong, honey! We can win this thing!" rallied Hal. Lois exhaled noisily, but said no more.
* * * * * *
When lunchtime came, Lois wisely decided not to force Reese to fend for himself. Instead, she made the thing the thing that Reese hated most in the world, and served it to him with nothing else.
"Scrambled eggs? But Mom, you know how much I hate scrambled eggs!" Reese was in disbelief. He hated scrambled eggs with a vengeance.
"Well I'm sorry, but at military school you don't get to choose your own food. It's either eat the scrambled eggs, or go hungry." Lois set the plate heaped with the hated food down in front of Reese.
With an amazingly huge sigh, Reese pinched his nose shut, and began to eat. After forcing half of the eggs down, he rushed to the bathroom, where they came back up again. Reese felt horribly sick.
"Reese!" Lois called.
"Yes?" Reese responded weakly.
"You need to clean out the garage, the refrigerator, and the attic."
"Mom, as much as I would love to do that," Reese heard himself saying, "It would take weeks."
"That's all right. We have all the time in the world." Lois smiled as she sipped the iced tea she enjoying on the patio.
Reese tried not to cry as he started to clear out the refrigerator. He was miserable.
* * * * * *
2 hours later, Reese was done cleaning out the fridge. He had seen things that no man should ever be forced to see. Some of the things in the fridge had been in there longer than he had been alive. Reese was dead tired, and dirtier than he had ever been. He could barely stand.
He wandered onto the back patio, where Lois was sitting on a lounge chair. "Mom? Is it all right if I go outside and play street hockey?"
"Well, it might be good for you to get some exercise. I know! Instead of street hockey, you can 100 push-ups, 200 sit ups, and 200 jumping jacks. I'll send your father out there to keep count," Lois smiled down at her son.
"Can I at least do it in the back yard so that the neighbors don't see?"
"No, you'll do it the front yard. I'm trying to read, it would distract me too much if you were back here." Lois dismissed her son with a wave of her hand, and returned to her book.
When Reese dragged himself out into the front yard, he saw that practically the entire neighborhood had come out of their houses to watch him suffer. He provided them with quite a bit of entertainment. After completing the jumping jacks and the sit ups, Reese sank down onto the ground to begin the push-ups. He collapsed shamefully into the grass after doing 34 push-ups.
Finally, he finished the other 76 push-ups, and staggered up off the grass. Reese mustered up all the strength left in his weary body, and crawled back onto the patio, to where Lois was still lounging happily, sipping a martini. "Mom, I learned my lesson. I'll change, I promise! Please, please stop the torture!"
Lois looked at her son who was begging for mercy. She relented, and helped him to his bed, where he promptly fell asleep.
* * * * * *
When Reese woke up several hours later, he smiled happily to himself. "I can't believe Mom actually bought that! Yeah right, like I'm actually gonna be good from now on! I wonder if I have any more of those water balloons left." Reese fell asleep again with a smirk on his face.