DMG Gains Foothold in War for Playroom

For many years, no one challenged DMG's dominion over his playroom. DMG filled it with toys and exercise equipment which he never used. He would lay on the floor for hours doing sudoku puzzles and listening to music. It was his favorite escape from a world that hated him. But that all changed.

Three years ago, DMG had a son named DMG Jr. From the day he was born, DMG Jr. has been driven by greed. Whatever he wanted, he got, and the thing he wanted most was DMG's playroom. Piece by piece, DMG's things got moved to storage, pawned off to DMG Jr's surrogates, or sent to the landfill. Whenever one of DMG's toys was removed, DMG Jr. would consolidate the victory by instantly filling the vacant floorspace with a toy of his own. A skilled diplomat, DMG Jr. formed a strategic alliance with his mother, Mrs. DMG, who wielded her considerable influence over DMG to further her son's conquest over the all-but-lost playroom. This pressure from all sides eventually forced DMG to surrender and withdraw completely from the space he loved so much. The terms of the surrender were humiliating. Fearing that DMG Jr. would go on to conquer the entire house, DMG agreed to buy the new king an oak crib using his own money and paint the whole room a pale blue color in exchange for a truce. That truce held for almost three years.

The unrest began last month when DMG Jr. and his mother travelled together to Asia to advance their interests there. Seeing that the playroom had been left undefended, DMG launched a series of raids in which he filled an entire 42-gallon garbage bag with toys that were no longer appropriate for his 3 year-old son. He felt a double-dose of schadenfreude as he heaved the heavy bag into the dumpster remembering how his own toys had met the same fate. He even removed some large items including a green plastic dragon with a series of chutes where DMG Jr. would laugh at funny electronic sounds as translucent balls roll down convoluted paths to the beige carpet floor. In the end, DMG had completely cleared the southeast corner of his former playroom. Following his son's strategy, he occupied the space with an object so large and bulky that he knew DMG Jr. would not be able to remove it. To be sure, he even anchored the object to the wall using a green bungee cord with the ends affixed well out of his young son's reach. So far, DMG's foothold in this ugly war of attrition has held. But with DMG Jr. back in town and his alliance with his mother as strong as ever, DMG has little reason to believe he will ever recapture the entire playroom that he loved so much.