Nativity Riot
I was a shepherd, complete with wooden shepherd's crook, freshly manufactured with a broom handle and some vicious looking coat hangers wrenched into a vague question mark shape wrapped with brown paper.

And someone had stolen Flossy, the lamb I was supposed to prance about on stage with in a few minutes time. Flossy may have been cotton wool, newspaper, and a pair of my mums old tights, but she meant the world to me. And worse, there was the inevitable public humiliation of going on stage sheeplessly.

Bastards.

So I panicked, ran around, desperately seeking any sign of the soggy bag of fluff that was Flossy. In tears after the first five minutes.

And that's when I saw her. My little mate Ollie had lost his own newspaper sheep, and, in a cunning plan, had taken Flossy for himself. And he was halfway to getting on stage, resplendent in all his Flossy glory.

The red mist descended on my young mind. That was my sheep, and I was having it.

Don't know exactly how it happened, but the next thing I knew, I was on the stage, in front of an eagerly awaiting crowd of doting parents.

Fury, unlike any my tiny mind had ever known. The curved part of my shepherd's crook was around Ollie's neck, slamming him to the floor. Much to my delight, for all my puny pre-pubescent muscles, 3 foot of broomstick can inflict a hell of a lot of leverage on a 3-foot child. Then there was the vicious coat-hanger core of the crooked end, pretty nasty stuff under it's thin paper shell.

Next swipe, Ollie was hurled away off his balance into the aghast parental audience.

The initial euphoria of a job well done slowly turned into an 'oh shit!'moment. Eddie, Ollie's best mate, a big muscly 6 year old who should have started shaving was making his way towards me- in his hands, yet another one of those vicious crooks.

5 year old shepherd fight!

Anarchy descended. Mary brained Joseph with the baby Jesus (a doll with a fairly solid head). 3 Angels descended upon her, who were promptly pelted with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Eddie caught me a vicious backhanded blow with the rear end of his crook, sending me sprawling. He then attacked the nearest donkey, trying to drag poor unfortunate Michael out of the torso sized papier mache head. I'm not sure why, but Eddie was weird.

Parents ran on stage to grab their beloved babies, only making the situation worse. There was no way this was stopping now, and it was only a matter of time before the first adult punch was thrown...

Later that evening, I was curled up sobbing in the bath, tending a black eye, burst lip and the emotional scars of the worst bollocking I'd ever known.

The worst part? The next day, I found a ripped and torn Flossy without her stuffing, jammed in a rubbish bin. I couldn't even rescue the marbles I'd sacrificed to simulate her eyes. This, ladies and gentlemen, is how wars start.
(Count Zapolai, Thu 26 Mar 2009, 23:48, 2 replies)

Hmm...
Blood, vengeance and fighting in unlikely places...

I forecast 'best of' for this.
( MatJ LOOK, Fri 27 Mar 2009, 0:37, closed)

Epic
post, mate - loved it. Cheers.
( SpankyHanky, Fri 27 Mar 2009, 11:19, closed)