Protection: Part I

Sarah gasped and clapped her hands over her eyes as the damsel in distress inched towards the giant, spinning saw blade. But not seeing what was happening was somehow worse than watching it, so she peeked between her fingers as the dashing hero rescued her and fought off the nefarious villain.

Sarah breathed a sigh of relief. “I knew he’d save her.”

Sitting on the couch behind her, her mom chuckled. “Did you? You looked pretty scared to me.”

“Nah. I wasn’t really scared. I was just pretending.”

“Oh, no,” said her dad. “Do we have an actress on our hands?”

“What’s an actress?”

“See that woman we just watched getting rescued?”

“Uh huh.”

“She’s an actress. She’s paid to dress up like that and say the lines they wrote for her character.”

This was enough to make Sarah turn around from her position sitting on the carpet and face her parents. “You mean she gets to wear pretty clothes and kiss that handsome man, and she gets paid to do it?”

“That’s right.”

Sarah’s jaw dropped as if unhinged and her eyes opened as wide as they would go in the exaggerated manner of a child in disbelief.

“Uh oh,” said her mother. “We do have an actress on our hands. Look at that face.”

“Do you think maybe I shouldn’t have told her it was a career option?”

“She would have found out sooner or later. Besides, my sister always said that an actress is born, not made. She’d always be an actress, regardless of what she did professionally.”

“Your sister the actress, you mean?”

“That’s the one.”

He looked at his daughter for a long moment. “How did you end up giving birth to your sister’s baby?”

“You know how they say certain genes skip a generation?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, in this case, instead of skipping a generation, I think the acting gene just ping ponged it’s way from my mom to my sister, to Sarah. Or maybe I’ve had it all along, but for some reason it’s lain dormant.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Well, I don’t recommend signing her up for acting classes.”

“You can take classes to do that?” came a tiny voice from the carpet in front of them.

Her parents were silent, looking at each other in the manner of two people in a horror movie who have just realized the monster is right behind them.

“OK, first of all,” said Sarah’s mom, “Maybe we should start by not talking about it in front of her.”

“Talking about what?” asked Sarah.

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that,” said her dad.

To be continued…