OLWG#97- We Went Wrong Somewhere

 Written for OLWG#97

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“Of course we used to tell them that stuff. Me and Muriel, we taught Santa Clause theory over the dinner table. We proffered Easter Bunny conspiracy scenarios as we drove them to Sunday school and then back home again, after stopping at Golden Corral for a lunch buffet. We talked about the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman, honest lawyers and politicians, not to mention the military industrial complex. We did all that stuff, but something still went wrong. Damned if I can figure it out.

“She left home in OhFour and we haven’t seen her since. She kept snakes when she was a teenager, but get this; she didn’t keep them as pets. Oh no, she raised them for food. Not food for her though. No, she wouldn’t eat them. She was a very picky eater. About once a month or so, she would box one of them serpents up and mail it to an orphanage in China. All because her mother, or maybe it was me I don’t remember for sure, had once tried to convince her to clean her dinner plate by telling her about ‘all the starving orphans in China’ who would be grateful for her liver and onions, or her Brussels Sprouts, or whatever it was that she wasn’t eating at the time.

“Is that what they call those tiny cabbages? Brussels Sprouts? I think it is. You know what I’m talking about don’tcha, those little green balls’a shit that people either roast, or fry, or boil, or whatever? They’re horrible but they are supposed to be good for you so her mother and I would choke a couple of them down and force the kids to eat the rest.

“Anyways, right before she left home for good, she packaged up one of her snakes to mail to China. There was a knock at the front door and when I answered it; there was a Postal Inspector, or a US Marshall, or an FBI guy, or one of those other puppets from the authoritarian regime. He asked for her by name so I called her downstairs. They arrested her on the spot for sending live snakes through the mail. Led her away in handcuffs, they did. We asked where they were taking her but they would only say ‘a detention centre, not too far away.’ I wish she’d write, but it’s been, what? Fifteen years now? Not a word?

“We had a bit of hope when the paper said that the government announced they were going to reunite parents and children who’d been separated at the border. Then Muriel pointed out that we don’t live anywhere near the border. I still wanted to believe though.

“It’s getting harder though, as each day passes.”

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This week’s prompts were:

1. He was a lout
2. she kept snakes
3. of course we used to tell them that

Missed out on the first one but I figure you can just apply that to the author. It’s all good then.

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