Dinner came and went as the family gathered around the dining room table and enjoyed a good meal. Dinner acted as a buffer to the main event of the evening as everyone waited in anticipation for the Body Exchange. Ben was the only one at the table who was dreading the Body Exchange and spent most of the dinner asking if perhaps they skipped it this year. This was laughed off almost immediately as once dinner wrapped up and everyone spent a little time digesting their meals, the tradition soon kicked off.
Everyone was gathered in the living room watching football on the TV when Elma slipped away for a moment. No one noticed her absence and it wasn’t meant to raise any concerns as she soon returned with a hat. With the help of Carly who was excited to become an adult again, the pair wrote everyone’s names down on pieces of paper and folded them up. All of the pieces of paper were placed into the hat as Elma made her announcement once the last name was put into the hat.
“Alright everyone, time for everyone’s favorite tradition,” Elma announced as she shoot the hat and mixed the names around. As she did so, she reached into her pocket with her free hand and pulled out a small but perfectly polished stone. The stone looked just like any other river rock with no special colors or designs to denote that it was magic. Elma continued to smile as she shook the hat. “You all know how this works. In the hat is the person you will be becoming this year.”
“How long are we doing this, mom?” Max asked as everyone nodded their heads. There was no timeline set this year. Sometimes, these swaps lasted until New Year’s while other times they lasted until next Thanksgiving. A few rare cases even saw the swaps last a random amount of time, usually when something major was happening that year like a wedding or graduation. The year that Tiffany graduated high school was one such example as the family stayed swap up until her last week of school, allowing her to graduate in her own body.
