Outnumbered

Sue:
Oh no, you're not scratching your head again. It's not nits is it? [checks, grimaces] God. No you're fine.

Sue:
It's my fault Veronica. I should never have shown Ben how to reply to an email.

Pete:
So Ben sent an email pretending to be you?

Karen:
Mum!

Sue:
Well actually...

Karen:
Mum!

Sue:
She's got nits. I'm halfway through.

Pete:
Oh God, it's these parents isn't it. They know their kids have got them and they just merrily pack them off to school.

Sue:
[grimacing guiltily] I know.

Sue:
You can't play with a nit can you?

Karen:
You can. You can play, like, I-Spy.

Karen:
[explaining that fairies can be lethal] They can fly down your throat and turn your heart into a pumpkin then your blood stops running and then you die.

Pete:
Ah, the old "what I did in the holidays" composition. I don't think our English department does that. I don't think year 7s know how to spell car-jacking.

Pete:
I don't believe it. Melanie Watts has confused Queen Elizabeth I with Queen Elizabeth II. She must have typed the wrong queen number into google. Hmm. The Virgin Queen now has four children apparently. One of them's a helicopter pilot.

Karen:
What's a hypocrite?

Pete:
Um. Well if said to you "you mustn't eat all the cake" and then I ate all the cake myself I'd be a hypocrite.

Pete:
Oh no. You're not checking your email.

Sue:
There's one from Veronica.

Pete:
Especially not one from Veronica.

Sue:
Oh no Veronica. No. I am not having that.

Pete:
No, don't reply. That's fatal because then she'll reply and then you'll be tempted to reply to her reply and then you'll get caught up in that Pandora's... circle.

Mum - Sue:
I know, lets play fortunately/unfortunately. I'll start. Fortunately, the sun was shining.

Ben:
Unfortunately, I don't like burgers.

Mum - Sue:
You said you like burgers!

Ben:
When did I say that?

Mum - Sue:
When you wouldn't eat your fish. I mean what do you like?

Ben:
Pudding.

Mum - Sue:
Now, you can't eat just puddings!

Ben:
You can if you're a vegetarian.

Mum - Sue:
Vegetarians eat up all the vegetables. The clue is in the word.

Deion:
You're germs from a fly.

Mum - Sue:
I've never been so insulted.

Karen:
You're hair!

Jake:
You're stinky brain juice, from a diseased cave troll.

Mum - Sue:
You are a dead warthog's burp.

Ben:
You're elephant poo, that's stinky and yucky.

Mum - Sue:
All right, enough of the poo jokes. Enough of the poo jokes!

Dad - Pete:
You could do with Ramadan lasting all year round, couldn't you Kamal?

Mum - Sue:
Is she eating?

Dad - Pete:
She keeps banging on about how that's not her bowl.

Mum - Sue:
It's not her bowl, because I broke her bowl this morning and had to drive all the way to Ikea to get her one that's identical but it *is* identical.

Dad - Pete:
Then how does she know it's not her bowl?

Mum - Sue:
I dunno. She must have powers.

Ben:
[Sue has tried to use the example of the boy who cried wolf to get Ben to stop fibbing] If you're going to talk to me about lying, there are no wolves around here. We're in London don't forget.

Dad - Pete:
What's that down there?

Mum - Sue:
Where?

Dad - Pete:
There.

Mum - Sue:
[sighs] Ben's dinner. Oh, he's good.

Angela:
Karen, this is for you. It's a dream catcher. It's made by the native Americans and it catches all your dreams and keeps them safe forever.

Karen:
I had a dream about weasels eating me last night and I don't want that one again.

Karen:
I like Auntie Angela.

Mum - Sue:
That's lovely sweetheart. Erm, anyway, let's get on with the game.

Karen:
That was part of the game.

Mum - Sue:
Can you climb over and help him?

Auntie Angela:
Help him... how?

Mum - Sue:
Well, hold it.

Auntie Angela:
Hold what?

Mum - Sue:
The box, otherwise it'll go everywhere!

Ben:
I'm not weeing in a box!

Karen:
She must know she's fat, 'cos if she looks in the bathroom mirror and then she sees a fat lady...

Karen:
When you die, do you think you'll get dug up by foxes? 'Cos that's what happened to my hamster.

Karen:
What does it feel like to be old? Is it nice?

Granddad:
Beats being dead.

Karen:
Why do you keep saying the same thing?

Granddad:
Umm - because I'm old.

Karen:
Well, Mummy always says the same thing. Is that because she's old?

Granddad:
What does she say to you?

Karen:
She says 'Grow up, stop being silly.'

Granddad:
She says that to you?

Karen:
No, she says that to Dad.

Ben:
Can I watch Little Britain?

Pete:
Have a guess.

Ben:
Yes.

Pete:
Have another guess.

Sue:
Angela? It wasn't organic chicken.

Sue:
So will you tell Dad you're leaving?

Angela:
Of course I will.

Sue:
So I'll be round there tomorrow night explaining why you're not coming back.

Jake:
Do dinner parties always end like that?

Pete:
The ones when your Auntie Angela is invited do.

Ravi:
The directors decided they only need one accountant. Not two.

Sue:
Ben and eggs. Why?

Karen:
Murderer!

Sue:
What?

Karen:
You murdered a mouse and now it's in a trap in the laundry room!

Sue:
[to Pete] I thought you were going to sort it.

Pete:
Sorry.

Karen:
Murderer!

Sue:
Why are you blaming me?

Pete:
You can't have mice in the house, can you?

Karen:
Why not?

Pete:
Because they're dirty and they smell.

Karen:
So does Ben.

Pete:
They run around the house and they poo everywhere.

Karen:
So does Ben.

[Pete is trying to have a father-son chat with Jake]

Jake:
Look, we've covered it all in school.

Pete:
Oh. Fair enough.

Jake:
Anyway, I had a long chat with Grandad about it.

Pete:
Grandad? What did he say?

Jake:
He just gave me loads of advice.

Pete:
What kind of advice?

Jake:
He said 'Always look at the mothers.'

Pete:
Why?

Jake:
'Cause women often end up looking like their mothers. He said he wished he'd taken a better look at Gram's mum.

Jake:
[Ben and Karen are arguing over woodchucks] Ben, woodchucks are the same as groundhogs. You know, like Groundhog Day? [to Pete] You've seen that, haven't you?

Pete:
Seen it? I think I'm in it.

Ben:
Have you ever fired a gun, Granddad?

Grandad:
Oh, yeah. In Korea.

Ben:
Have you ever seen anybody get shot?

Grandad:
Oh yeah...

Jake:
What, in Korea?

Grandad:
No, in a pub in Aldershot.

Pete:
That's the House of Commons, where the government makes the law and which was bombed in World War II, Karen.

Karen:
How do they decide which laws to make?

Pete:
Well, they read the Daily Mail and do what it says.

Jake:
What's that?

Pete:
It's just a letter from the hospital. Instructions about my colonoscopy.

Karen:
Is that where they chop off the top of your brain to make you behave better?

Pete:
That's a lobotomy.

Karen:
Oh. Miss Lyons said Ben could do with one of those.

Sue:
How was school?

Pete:
Oh, we had the police in with some handwriting experts after the latest death threat to the headmaster. I mean, personally, I don't think it could have been one of our pupils who wrote the death threats 'cause the grammar's too good. And the word "disembowel" was spelled correctly. It was probably one of the teachers. Like last time.

Karen:
Mum, Dad, Ben's scaring me!

Sue:
He scares us all, Karen, go to sleep!

Pete:
My mother's playing swingball?

Sue:
Yeah, it's round three of Ben's paralympic heptathlon. They're only allowed to use one arm and one leg.

Pete:
Isn't that dangerous?

Sue:
You should have seen the blind archery.