Story Treatment - Ted Garland - Assignment 04

Sometimes the simplest things can be so complicated.  Especially when the simple thing is waking my kids for school.  The characters are Roger, my son, age 18, a high school senior and Madison, age 12, a seventh grader, and then me, of course.  I play the villain.

The story begins with the bright, cheery morning greeting when dad (me) pokes his head into each room telling each that it's time to get up.  After going away for a few minutes, the dad returns to find them both back asleep.  Thus begins the routine of gentle encouragement, ignoring, cajoling, deception, threatening and eventually torture.

The story ends with the two school children standing clean, dressed and ready for school, in the doorway to their father's room.  They gaze at him as he lays out cold, exhausted from the ordeal of waking his children.