2735. Love is in the air

You’d think that a simple thing like dropping your child off at a day care centre would be a simple thing. Well, it used to be. That was until I started talking to another parent each day. Natalie was her name. She was a solo mother with a daughter the same age as my son. I was a widower. My wife had died not long after Rory was born.

I found myself dropping off Rory each day at the exact time I knew that Natalie was dropping off her child. She worked for the City Council; some sort of secretarial job. I was self-employed. I researched genealogical documents for people who wanted to know their family tree but didn’t have the knowhow to do it themselves. They paid well too!

 Natalie’s hours were flexible, as were mine. It didn’t matter if we dawdled a little when we dropped off our children. Eventually I asked her if she would like to go to lunch and she said “Yes”.

It was the start of something. That was sixteen years ago. My goodness me! What a two-timing double-crossing, selfish, catty, mean, sour hussy her daughter has turned out to be. I can’t wait for her to pack up and leave home. Of course I would never tell Natalie that. She’d go into revenge mode and I couldn’t guarantee my future would be safe. I mean, I’ve always suspected that a couple of years ago she was the one who poisoned Rory.

2498. Inheritance

John-Claude was a widower. He had one child, a son called Peter. His son was the epitome of laziness, but nonetheless John-Claude tried to cheer him (unsuccessfully) into doing some work.

John-Claude’s property was a few acres with a couple of cows and a few goats and a pet pony. The cottage was straight out of a book of fairy-tale illustrations, with a beautiful garden of hollyhocks and petunias and grape vines that ran around the thatched eaves. Things always seemed to be in flower!

John-Claude had a sneaky suspicion that he was on his last legs. He was getting on. “I think I hear an approaching death rattle,” he told his son. Well! Was the son excited or what! He suggested to his father that all should be put in his, the son’s, name. That way, there would be little to worry about when the dreaded moment arrived. John-Claude did that. The house and property was now in Peter’s name. All John-Claude need now do was die.

But he didn’t.

Son Peter was annoyed as anything. He still did no work, but the place was looking nice because John-Claude still laboured hard. In fact the relationship between father and son was more slave to slave owner. Peter made his father sleep out in the garden shed. He didn’t want to be woken with a racket in the early mornings when John-Claude rose to do some work on the property.

John-Claude developed an idea. For years he had been friends with the bank manager. They had been Friday-night drinking companions at the pub for yonks. The bank manager printed off a pretend document. It was a bank statement. It said that John-Clause had eleven million eight hundred and seventy-two dollars and seventeen cents in his account. John-Claude accidentally left it on the dining table.

After that son Peter worked his guts out. He couldn’t have been more helpful, more cheerful, harder working. John-Claude reverted to occasionally pottering in the garden as befits a retired gentleman. The place retained its picture-postcard look thanks to Peter’s back-breaking efforts.

Eventually, when John-Claude died, the fortune-expecting lazy son discovered there was zilch to inherit.

2438. Grandpa puts his finger on it

(In 2437 stories we’ve never had a guest story-teller! The other day,  Noelle of SaylingAway, left a family tale in the comments which I repost here for all to see. Thank you Noelle!)

My son was not quite five when he started school (kindergarten). He took the bus after school all by himself to the YMCA. We were called by the YMCA Director after a week or two because she said he was making inappropriate gestures at the other children. We met her with my son and she told us he’d been giving the other children the middle finger. When we asked him about this, he said yes, he did, and held up his hand with his middle finger up but bent at the first joint.

I asked him what that meant and he said his grandfather did it (my Dad had terrible arthritis and couldn’t fully extend his finger) and had told my son when he did it, “This means I won’t be going to heaven.” The director sputtered and said we needed to tell our son what it really meant and not to do it. We laughed all the way home.

Story 9: Egg sandwiches

This is the seventh and final day of seven days in which an earlier story is repeated. Today it is Story 9: “Egg sandwiches”. It was first posted on 19 October 2013.

The truth was, she didn’t get on all that well with her son, although she loved him dearly. At least, she didn’t get on well since he’d reached puberty. They couldn’t seem to talk. And now he was eighteen. So it was particularly special when he asked her to come to a social afternoon at one of his mate’s houses to celebrate a marriage engagement. “Just my mates and their Mums”, he said. “And bring something to eat.” It was their way of getting food.

She rather liked his friends, but he never brought them home. All the other parents seemed to have their share of the young set calling around at their homes. Not that they necessarily socialized with them — but at least they were there and, somehow, relevant. She had felt… well, left out. She thought perhaps they scorned her behind her back.

But now he had invited her. “Bring something to eat”, he’d said. “Bring something to eat.” In some silly way (at last! at last!) she felt as if she was wanted.

That morning she boiled some eggs, forked them to a paste and made some sandwiches. She arranged them on a plate with a piece of parsley.

She was a little bit scared. Since her husband had left quite a few years back, and she was left to manage alone, she never quite knew how she was doing. This little party was her way of saying — perhaps without anyone noticing — “This is my son. I think I’ve done a reasonable job”.

The little social started, and she felt so proud of her son. He walked in with her and said to everyone as they entered, “This is my Mum”, and he seemed to mix so nicely and casually with everyone. She had a lovely conversation too with one of his mates — about fishing, and where the best trout places were in the river. Later she heard someone say, “Shit, who made the fucking egg sandwiches?” And, when at the end of the afternoon she went to get her plate to go home, she noticed that no one had eaten anything she’d made.

2059. The meanest, nastiest mother

Letitia’s nine-year-old son, Jason, was a brat. It was a quality he had inherited from his mother. Jason’s teacher (currently on strike) had described Letitia as “the meanest, nastiest mother I have ever encountered in my thirty-two years of teaching.”

Indeed, Jason had inherited every inch of his mother’s nastiness, and not an ounce of his father’s niceness. His father visited once a month, for an hour only. That was all that Letitia allowed. The father was there, said Letitia, to “pay the bills and stay out of our life.”

How the tables turned when Paddy came into a considerable fortune! The ink had hardly dried on Paddy’s newly-created will, leaving all to Jason, when Letitia conceived a plot. Next time Paddy visited she would poison him.

Letitia shared her plan with Jason. “You want to be rich? Let’s not hang around. Let’s get rid of him. Here’s the plan…”

Jason was to offer his father a cup of coffee. He was to put the poisonous powder into his father’s mug along with the sugar.

Jason took after his mother – the meanest, nastiest mother ever encountered. When his father visited Jason prepared the coffee as instructed. He gave his mother the special mug.

1471. Clay pigeon shooting

Paddy had always enjoyed clay pigeon shooting. In fact, he was something of the local champion. His nine-year old son, Charlie, was a great help too. Charlie would sit in a ditch on the farm and pull the clay pigeon trap, shooting the clay pigeons into the air at different adjusted angles and heights. Paddy would stand back at quite a distance and shoot each clay pigeon as it suddenly flew unpredictably into the sky. Paddy practiced clay pigeon shooting usually a couple of times a week.

On this particular occasion young Charlie had just over thirty clay pigeons to fire into the air. His father missed hitting only two of them. All the others were successfully blown to smithereens.

When he ran out of clay pigeons to fire into the air, Charlie popped up from the protective ditch to tell his father that the clay pigeons were all used up, and quick-reflex Paddy blew his son’s head off.

Poem 37: Loss

(The poetic form selected for this month is the Standard Habbie aka Burns Stanza).

For eighteen years I nursed and fed.
I can’t believe, son, you are dead.
I try to fathom things you said.
I weep a bit –
The life that we together led –
The end of it.

I’m here to clean out all your drawers;
Your shirts and trousers, socks and smalls.
I’ll pack them quick before I bawl.
This coat I know!
Too short for someone quite so tall!
Such thoughts bring woe.

I’ll leave it for another day.
I cannot clear the past away.
Someone else can pack, I say.
I cannot hide
The path you took when things turned grey –
Your suicide.

To hear the poem read aloud click HERE.

1087. Leaving home

Nadia was always cleaning up after her son, Ben; picking up shirts, putting shoes away, picking up towels. Once she had refused to do it, and it became almost impossible to move around. Nadia harped about it a little, but not too much.

Not long after he turned nineteen, Ben decided to leave home and make it on his own. Of course he shared an apartment with several others.

Nadia missed the mess. She half wished she had some shirts to pick up after him, because it would mean he was home. But when they have to fly the nest they have to fly the nest, said Nadia. Goodness knows how messy his apartment will be.

Nadia decided to visit, just to make sure “everything was alright and did he need anything?” It was Saturday.

The apartment was spotless; very neat and orderly. Did he want to pop home for lunch, enquired Nadia? He couldn’t afford the time, he said. It was his turn to do the vacuuming and the week’s laundry. And he thought he might clean all the windows as well.

1050. Natural stubbornality

That’s the trouble with Bertrand; he’s so pig-headed. He might be only eight years old, but he’s as stubborn as an ox. I am almost embarrassed to admit that I gave birth to such a creature. Sometimes I suspect he’s a little backward when it comes to the brains department. Here he comes now.

“Did you clean the stain off the laundry floor as I asked?”

“Yes, but it didn’t work very well. I used mainly water, with 5% tetrasodium ethylenediaminetetraacetate, 6% disodium oxosilanediolate, and 2% alkyl(C8-10) polyethoxypolypropoxybenzene ether. I thought that would work.”

“You naughty, naughty boy. I told you to use 5% boric acid, 5.3% nonylphenol polyethylene glycol ether, 14% dipropylene glycol monomethyl ether, and 1.6% tetrasodium ethylenediamine tetraacetate. No wonder the stain is still there. Go back and try again.”

See what I mean? Stubborn as an ox. He certainly doesn’t take after me, that’s for sure.

981. Consulting mother

Married Son: Mum, there’s something I want to say. I’d like to have a talk with you.

Mother: You can say what you like to me, dear. What is it you want to talk about?

Married Son: Well it’s about my wife, Heidi.

Mother: What’s the problem? I’m very open. Does she find me difficult? You can say whatever you like.

Married Son: Yes. She doesn’t like the way you seem to criticize everything she does. It seems like she can’t do anything right.

Mother: I most certainly do not. What on earth gave her that idea?

Married Son: Well she…

Mother: It’s all in her mind. She’s a cot case, imagining stuff like that. She’s living in cuckoo land. I’m very surprised you married her. I thought you had more sense.

Married Son: Well she…

Mother: I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING FURTHER ABOUT HER INADEQUACIES. YOU MADE THE BED. YOU LIE IN IT. END OF STORY.

Listen to the story being read HERE!