I’ve slipped through the fingers of young men like water. Now I find myself settled at the bottom of a coffee mug with your sonogram printed on it.
Emotional games have grown tiresome. There’s a limited amount of time in my life now, and that time can’t be spent waiting for a text when your dad has already sent me an article on microfinancing, a warning about pyramid schemes and three pictures of your family dog. He says her name is Lacey. Soon it’ll be Decadence or Gem Pile or Lacey The Dog Who Used To Be Yours Before I Stole Your Dad And The Family Dog, Margaret.
Now it’s time to be treated right. It’s time to be lavished with hockey tickets and gift cards to Outback Steakhouse. It’s time to go to DSW and get any pair of size 11 shoes in the clearance rack I want. It’s time to be taken to the olive bar at Kroger and hear those magic words: “Go wild at this Kroger olive bar.”
You can send me all the angry emails you want. I’ll read each of them on each of my iPads, in ascending order of generations.
I know it’s hard for you to understand, but we make each other better. I encourage him to reject the culture of youthful entitlement in which you and your sister partake. He encourages me to buckle up in the backseat of his 2008 Honda Accord.
Now before you try to tell me that this relationship is exploitative, let me ask: isn’t it more exploitative for your mom to have poured emotional and physical labor into this marriage for 16 years and get so little in return? She suppressed all her demands, and now what does she have save for some tangible proof of past desirability?
Don’t try to guilt trip me about your mother. Now the time she would have spent on reminding your dad to apply sunblock to his bald spot can be used to finally (finally!) make that final trip to Joanne’s Fabrics to get those three yards of spun cotton and finish her memory quilt. I know you don’t care about the patch depicting your mom’s first pet, but I do. The Bank of America security questions are getting to be a real drag.
Listen, pet, I’m sorry — really, I am — but you have to understand that when you have the sort of power I do, it’s difficult not to wield it. As soon as I closed my eyes, reached out my arm, and picked a World War II book at random from Barnes and Noble, your dad’s fate was sealed forever. Sorry, sweetie.
By the way, can you please come over later and show me and your dad how to delete all these files off my laptop? Something’s gunked up in there and dang it if it’s not throwing us for a real loop.
Charlotte Raskovich is a Humor writer.
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