Minutiæ

It’s always nice to take one small fam­i­ly vaca­tion right before school starts. You can hang out by the water and lis­ten to your iPod, or go up to the moun­tains and send a mil­lion Goebbel­grams to your friends. That’s what vaca­tions are all about. Except this time… your par­ents for­got you at home!

Since you got mad at your dad and start­ed sleep­ing in the attic to get away from them for a while, your par­ents total­ly for­got to wake you up and left on that week­end trip to the lake with­out you. Now you’ve got the whole place to your­self! You can watch rat­ed R movies like Laturskey: Cleve­land’s Angri­est Cop, eat all the ice cream in the freez­er and prank call the drug­store. It’s going to be a great weekend!

FRIDAY

11:30 a.m.

WAKE & BAKE

Yawn like you’re still tired even though almost half the day is over, while you climb down from the attic and start to make your way to the kitchen. Pour half a box of Cin­na­mon Toast Crunch ($3.29, Gen­er­al Mills) into a mix­ing bowl, open the fridge and dis­cov­er that there’s no milk. Yell out for your mom like always, but instead of her annoy­ing voice there’s only silence. Yell again. Even­tu­al­ly huff and walk upstairs, check­ing every room as you go and dis­cov­er­ing that your par­ents must have left with­out you for the week­end. Awesome!!

Imme­di­ate­ly turn on the oven and pull out a bag of Tater Tots ($2.79, Ore-Ida), throw them onto a pan. Pull them out just before the rec­om­mend­ed time, so some of the tots are warm and some are still ice cold in the mid­dle, but who cares! You’re free!

8 p.m.

GROGGY, FOGGY

Emerge from your snack coma to real­ize that eight hours have gone by. Peel your­self off your par­ents’ Ikea Ektorp Cov­er 2+2 sec­tion­al sofa ($459, Ikea) and go hit the bath­room for a whizz. After all, you’ve been drink­ing a lot of soda.

Once you’re back in the liv­ing room, notice that it’s almost total­ly dark out, and a fog has descend­ed on the neigh­bor­hood. Every house on your block is emp­ty, because every­one’s gone to the lake for the week­end — except you! Let the feel­ing of that pow­er wash over you, and use it as moti­va­tion to play video games on your par­ents’ big screen TV for two and a half hours straight.

10:30 p.m.

THE ONE WHO KNOCKS

After hear­ing a knock on the front door, make a dive for the remote to turn off the Pana­son­ic Viera 50″ Class ST60 Plas­ma HDTV ($1000, Pana­son­ic) in the the mas­ter bed­room. It could be your dumb aunt who heard you got left behind and is com­ing over to make you eat veg­eta­bles and read books all week­end. No thanks Aunt Millie!

Crawl over to the JELD-WEN Pre­mi­um Series Dou­ble Hung Win­dows ($759, Lowe’s) and peek out to find a stub­by man in a Navy Three-Hole ski mask ($10.99, Mod​ells​.com) rolled up to his fore­head, check­ing for signs of pos­si­ble entry. Duck down before he spots you, then lis­ten close­ly: there’s anoth­er rustling, this time from the back door. Scam­per silent­ly to the back and find a tall, goofy-faced bur­glar wear­ing the same rolled-up ski mask, try­ing to pick the lock on your back door. It’s going to be a long weekend.

10:32 p.m.

VOICE YOUR DISPLEASURE

Run upstairs and grab your broth­er’s old toy voice mod­u­la­tor with built-in micro­phone ($7.76, punch​bowl​.com). You’re going to have to put that gory cop movie from ear­li­er to good use. Run back down­stairs and set up behind the couch. Click on the device and start quot­ing the most tough-sound­ing lines from the movie you can remem­ber. “Get back, you scum­bags, or I’ll pump you so full of lead you won’t be able to walk through a met­al detec­tor at the air­port any­more!” is a good one to start with.

Check for their reac­tions. If the intrud­ers seem fright­ened off, con­sid­er this a job well done. But they won’t be, so you’ll have to go with Plan B. In the mean­time, toss out a few more gems from the film, like “I hate your face, Laturskey, and I’m not afraid to punch it!”

SATURDAY

1:21 a.m.

WAKEY WAKEY, EGGS & BREAKY

Jolt awake from your posi­tion on the liv­ing room floor, sur­round­ed by tacks turned prick­ly-side up. You fell asleep at your post, and now the sound of shat­ter­ing glass can be heard from the den. Luck­i­ly, you planned for this, and put down a thick lay­er of egg whites ($3.19, Bet­ter’n Eggs, Vons) under every win­dow. Lis­ten close­ly for the inevitable slip, crash and swear word. Think for a sec­ond ‘would­n’t it be fun­ny if it were Aunt Mil­lie?!’ Haha­ha­ha. But it’s not. It’s a burglar.

1:23 a.m.

iPAD THE STATS

Grab the iPad your par­ents got you for your birth­day and cue up an FPSRus­sia YouTube video (free, youtube​.com/​F​P​S​R​u​s​sia). Any­thing with lots of heavy machine gun fire will work, just make sure the bul­lets come loud, fast and often. With your Blue­tooth sup­port­ed Sonos PLAY:5 wire­less music sys­tem ($399, Sonos​.com) you can push the sound of rapid gun­fire through­out the entire house — wire­less­ly! That should keep the thugs at bay for now. But there’s always tomorrow.

4:45 p.m.

BACK TO THE ‘BOOK

A full day, and no word from the attack­ers. Maybe they’ve decid­ed to attack all the oth­er emp­ty hous­es on your block instead. Update your Face­book (free*, Face​book​.com) with fun­ny emo­jis and posts about how dumb the rob­bers are, and how they could­n’t even get past your sim­ple diversions.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the bad guys can read all of these posts, because they’re using the Who Snooped? app ($2.99, Apple iTunes App Store) to peek in on your con­ver­sa­tions. Now they’re mad, and they’re com­ing back.

6:45 p.m. 

SPORTS STAND OUTS

Slide into Kristofer­’s Sports Haus (2317 N. Gage Ave.; 314−667−9810) just before it clos­es, then pre­tend to look at the jer­seys way in the back. Once old man Kristofer has locked up for the night, cor­ral all of the card­board cutouts of famous ath­letes you can car­ry. Fold them down and slip them, one by one, under the front door. Then pre­car­i­ous­ly climb up the hat rack wall to the open win­dow above, slip out and onto the roof. Scale down the back wall, run around to the front and col­lect the wait­ing card­board cutouts. You’re going to need them.

SUNDAY

12:18 a.m.

PUT YOUR BACK INTO IT

Guess who’s back? The tall one with the goofy face and the chub­by short one. And they have some mean looks on their face. Luck­i­ly, you’ve rigged up all of the card­board cutouts to a series of strings and pulled your dad’s Litho­nia OFL flood­lights ($52, light​ingdi​rect​.com) off the garage for a lit­tle back­light­ing. Cue up the Katy Per­ry and set those cutouts to dance! The con­fused bur­glars won’t stay away for long, but it’s a start.

5 a.m.

A CLOSE SHAVE

Since you could­n’t sleep, try using your dad’s razor and Brut after­shave ($13.85 / two-pack, CVS). OWWWEEEEEEE!!!

7 a.m.

A POWERFUL ENDING

The intrud­ers are back for one last run at your fam­i­ly’s goods. If you’ve stocked up prop­er­ly, your house should be out­fit­ted with boo­by traps that will foil, embar­rass and seri­ous­ly injure them, all to great comedic effect. Let’s get to work!

First, take your Black & Deck­er Smart 40 Volt car charg­er ($99, Wal­mart) and hook it up to the back door. With that much amper­age, the bad guys are sure to get a big jolt. But they won’t be knocked out cold, so you’ll need to mod­i­fy your dad’s Fal­con Safe­ty flare gun ($22.99, fal​con​safe​ty​.com) to shoot a buck­shot round of bb’s once they make their way inside.

While the wound­ed bur­glars recov­er, scam­per upstairs and under­neath the Rosle Kitchen Blow­torch ($62.00, Brook​stone​.com) that you rigged to fire when you pull a series of strings. For effect, turn on Ride of the Valkyries (Wag­n­er, pub­lic domain) and let it play through the house. Once the bur­glars hit the stair­case, toss down some live eels (free, any riv­er) to slow their ascent, then pull the strings just in time to singe their stu­pid faces. This is going great!

7:11 a.m.

FIRST, YOU MUST CONCENTRATE

Uh oh, spoke too soon. The rud­dy faces of the evil bur­glars stood up eas­i­ly to the blow­torch and now they’re right behind you. Luck­i­ly, you stole a giant bag of old oranges (behind the Vons) and dumped them out on the floor as you run, mak­ing the bur­glars slip and fall every­where. Once they’re down, move in for the final act of jus­tice. Lift up and cal­lous­ly drop your par­ents’ GE 24,000 BTU Home Air Con­di­tion­er ($699, Home Depot) on their heads. While they’re knocked out, use the 50 foot Grainger S‑Video out cable ($14.30, Grainger​.com) that you got from behind the TV and tie them up good. Con­sid­er call­ing the police from your UnidenD1364 cord­less phone ($29.99, RadioShack), but instead call Beefer, who owns Beefer­’s Junk Yard, to come take these guys away.

4:00 p.m. 

A TALE TO TELL

Your par­ents walk in to find you watch­ing Laturskey 2: Rise of A Bad Cop in their bed­room, and imme­di­ate­ly get sent to bed with­out sup­per. Try to explain your crazy week­end, but they are hav­ing none of it. Lat­er, when your par­ents fin­ish putting every­thing away, they’ll find a sin­gle card­board cutout of Charles Barkley tucked behind the couch. ♦