Richard flopped down on his wooden chair and reached across the table for a dinner roll, only to have his hand slapped by his daughter, Zoe.
"Ask, don't reach," she said, rolling her eyes, then passing a roll to him.
Richard, while stung by the rebuke from his offspring, thanked the girl and accepted her offering. He knew that he had much more to be thankful for than most men his age. Some of his friends had accused him of being irresponsible, that he was taking advantage of his overproductive and over overly-conscientious children, but he didn't care. He was who he was, and everybody else was just jealous.
Wiping his fingers on his jeans, he grinned and asked for Jon, his son, to pass the ginger chicken. Jon stared at his father briefly, as if in a daze, then slid the serving dish across the table. What was up with him? Maybe he'd had a hard day at the office.
Richard knew Jon worked hard for the family. He was only 17, but he had finished high-school early and taken a job at a fancy import/export company downtown, a surprise to everybody. Jon, of course, had excelled, as he usually did at everything. How A couple of slobs like Richard and Laura had produced such amazing kids was beyond them, but of course the couple didn't put much thought into it. As long as Zoe and Jon kept doing their jobs, Richard and Laura focussed on the more important things in life: television, video games, and, of course, sex.
Sex was so great. That was something both Richard and Laura agreed on. Again, Richard marvelled at the luck he had, marrying a woman with the libido of a teenage boy, one that was always dressing up in those sexy sports socks, those hot boxer shorts, those amazing classic-rock t-shirts. He couldn't wait to get her alone that evening, to lay her on the bed, to turn on a cartoon, and to get down and dirty. Life was perfect.
