Once upon a time, in a far away land lived a young lady who went by the name of Portia. Once upon a time, someone actually came up with an original opening line to hook the audience with. Unfortunately, such a thing has gone on a hopefully brief holiday from most articles of contemporary literature, so the narrator must put a swift halt to her digression. However, whilst on the subject of holidays, Fair Portia was surfing a technology called the Internet, seeking a most rare opportunity- a good holiday.

"MUUUUUUUUM!"

The amazingly bird like screech was enough to pull Louise out of her strange internal monologue delivered in third person and back into her monotonous reality. The strange monologue in question described the fairly common scene of her slightly overweight daughter Portia interrupted from hogging the computer, and the subsequent battle for dominance between her two daughters; the aforementioned Portia and the eternally effervescent, vitally vivacious Kylie. The vivacious Kylie looked more like the vicious Kylie at the moment though, looking a second away from grabbing her elder sister’s luxurious brown mane of hair and pulling her by force off the computer she was supposed to withdraw from a good twenty minutes ago. Sighing resentfully as she set down her cooking pot, Louise made her way over to become a character in what had the potential to be a soap opera dramatic enough to rival Days of Our Lives.

"Now girls, what seems to be the problem here?" She asked in her best Mum Voice, although she knew quite well that the problem related back to Portia’s addiction to the computer and the high levels of hormones prevalent in the average teenager body, but perhaps even more so in that of Kylie’s. "Mum," she moaned, drawing out the affectionate term in a way that made Louise wince in agony, "She," now the crocodile tears began to gather in her blue eyes, "won’t get", they were gathering alarmingly fast and if Louise didn’t put a stop to this soon… "OFF THE COMPUTER!" Kylie suddenly broke into strangled sobs with the occasional proclamation that her life was completely over, she hated her sister, she hated school, she hated small animals and something that sounded astonishingly like she hated her boyfriend Mitch. The Mitch! The one she hadn't shut up about all week! 'Surely this can't be happening!' thought Louise unbelievingly.

Louise could only stand transfixed in horror as her teenager transformed into a howling creature of doom, before hurtling off as fast as possible into her room. Louise registered a door slamming in the distance, before breathing a sigh of relief that the awkwardness of the moment was gone. But just as she breathed said sigh of relief, another moment of awkwardness slammed into the room almost as fast as children running out of the classroom when dismissed, whilst Portia returned to her clicking on holiday snapshots of couples who’d enjoyed a romantic trip to romantic Fiji, for the small price of 10, 000 American dollars. The clicking of the computer mouse and faint chirping of cicadas was only occasionally broken by the sound of popping bubblegum in Portia’s mouth.

"So…" Louise started, her sentence trailing off almost before it got started. "Have you and Bill set a moving out date yet?" she asked in what she hoped was a nonchalant manner. If she was expecting an answer consisting of more than one syllable, she was to be sorely disappointed. "Nope." Snap, went Portia’s gum after she replied, eyes still glued to that blasted computer monitor. Oh how Louise would love to just take that gum right out of that monosyllabic mouth and just…

Louise purposely let that little fantasy trail off when she realised that she’d been staring at Portia’s head for the past three minutes blankly, and began to retreat to the lovely sanctuary that was her bedroom, determined to get a good night's rest. On second thought she realised that she shouldn’t have worried as she doubted that Portia could bear to tear her eyes away from pictures of Tahiti, or whatever holiday destination she’d recently become obsessed with to notice whatever anyone else was doing. Oh how she would love to buy her a one way ticket to Tahiti sometimes…

Louise suddenly realised that she hadn’t been outside the house in a little while. Perhaps that was the cause of her sudden aggravation with her daughters, commercial advertising and the materialistic, thrill seeking society she lived in. Perhaps tomorrow she could…

BANG! BANG! BANG!

She started as the loud noises that sounded almost like machine guns fired at her window, disturbing what would have been her last thoughts before drifting into a peaceful slumber. But wait, hadn’t this happened just the other week?

Stomping over to the window, Louise stopped to check out her best Angry Face in her bedroom mirror, to find it ready for combat and complete with a snarl tugging at her mouth. After a analysing it for a moment, she reluctantly prepared herself for being mistaken for an undomesticated cat or crazed member of the paparazzi before ripping open her bedroom window. There she met an all to familiar situation that had plagued her ever since Portia, and later Kylie had reached the latter years of their adolescence.

"I told you last week Mitch! If you insist in following the pathetic cliche of pegging rocks at your sweetheart’s window, Kylie’s is two bloody windows down! I’m an old woman and I deserve my sleep!" She bellowed angrily.

"But what happens if I want you to be my sweetheart Mrs Zain?" questioned Mitch confidently, with what she assumed was supposed to be a winning smile plastered on his oily face. As she ground her teeth together, Louise was forced to back down and accept defeat to that damned teenage upstart by slamming her window. Resolving to challenge him to another battle of quick quips when she'd had a coffee, Louise could now enjoy the peaceful slumber that she had so yearned for.

Mr Zain- Louise’s husband- would later return home from a long day at the office to see his much loved wife muttering and occasionally snorting in her sleep. He tried to choke back laughter, but after hearing several grunts and even mutters of what he what could have sworn was "stupid cliches", tears of silent laughter rolled down his weathered face. It was times like these that made living in a materialistic, thrill seeking society as the father to two daughters with a large lung capacity usually utilised for whining for their latest expense, definitely worth it.