1. That’s Good Enough for Me
The old
man sat in the living room, whittling and watching Cargo Wars on the
television, only halfway paying attention to the knife as it missed the knob of
wood he was working on and flayed his hand wide open. His wife and two grown
children laughed heartily as he bled out all over the room, staining the
already heavily stained couch.
“Haha, good one, Dad. You did it
again!” His twenty-six-year-old boy, Hansel, chuckled.
“Yer dumb!” Said his
twenty-four-year-old daughter, Gretel.
His glare said it all. He was
not impressed. “Somebody get me a goddamned rag!” The old man yelled.
The wife rushed out of the room,
hurrying back with a roll of paper towels.
“I said a rag, you ninny!
Something to stop the bleeding!”
“Oh, you’ll be fine, dear. This
happens every night.”
It was true. It happened every
night, like clockwork.
“Yet you continue to whittle,”
the wife said.
It was true. He did continue to
whittle every night, like clockwork.
“Why don’t you give it up, Dad?”
Gretel asked.
“Because,” said the father,
“It’s my job.”
“Your job?” asked the wife.
“You’ve been doing this for years and years and you haven’t sold one yet. This
place just keeps on piling up with your little carvings. Have you seen the
spare bedroom lately? We could never have anyone over for drinks and give them
a place to sleep. You can’t even see the bed. You can barely open the door.
It’s chock-full of the little nothings you’ve created. I don’t even know what
they’re supposed to be.” She held up the piece he had been working on. “I mean,
look at this. What is this?”
“It’s a battleship.”
“A battleship? It looks, like,
the complete opposite of a battleship. If someone asked me to carve the
complete opposite of a battleship, this is most likely what I’d come up with.
You’ve been doing this long enough, honey. You should be honing your skill.
Instead, you’ve gotten worse since the beginning.”
“That’s because I keep cutting
myself!” he answered. “I have no feeling in my left hand.”
“Maybe you should get a real
job, Dad,” Hansel suggested.
“Yeah,” Gretel agreed.
“Maybe I should get a real job?
Maybe I should get a real job?”
“Yes,” said Hansel. “A real job.
How do you expect to support us with those shitty wood carvings nobody wants to
buy?”
“Support you?” the old man said.
“Support you? You’re adults! Why am I still trying to support you?”
“‘Cause we’re your kids, Dad,”
Gretel said.
“Yeah, well, that’s up for
debate still.” He rolled his eyes at his wife. “Hey, here’s a novel idea. Why
don’t you two get jobs?”
Hansel and Gretel looked at each
other for a few seconds, then a rather large guffaw escaped the both of them.
“Hahaha!” said Hansel. “Funny, Dad. Jobs. Ha!”
“I’m serious. I’ve had it with
trying to support a family of four. When your mother gave birth to you two
ingrates, I was under the impression that after eighteen long years, I’d be
done with this shit. Yet here you are, still.”
“That’s ‘cause you love us,”
Gretel said.
“Yes. I do love you kids. That’s
why I think it’s time you grew up and became respectable members of society.”
“But Daaaad…” whined Gretel.
“Don’t but Dad me. It’s high
time you made something of yourselves. You should be out there making your
mother and me proud. You should be making you proud. Don’t you want more out of
life?”
Brother and sister shook their
collective heads. “Not really,” they said, in unison.
“You have till the end of the
month to get the hell out of my house,” said the old man.
“But what are we gonna do?”
asked Hansel.
“Yeah,” said Gretel. “We have no
skills.”
A silence fell over them as they
all mulled this thought over. It was true. They had no skills. Their attention
turned back to the TV, where truck drivers were bidding on long-haul jobs.
“That’s it!” yelled the old man,
joyfully. “That’s what you’re gonna do. Long haul trucking!”
The two grown children had
another hard laugh.
“I’m serious,” the father said.
The silence once again crept in
as the children mulled over just how idiotic their father’s idea was.
Until the guy with the big beard
on TV won his bid to haul a truck full of dwarfs to some broad’s castle a
thousand miles away. Twenty-six hundred dollars won him the bid, and with that,
the children started salivating.
“Gretel, are you thinking what
I’m thinking?”
“That our old man isn’t such an
idiot after all?” asked Gretel.
Hansel looked over at his father
and shook his head. “No. He’s still an idiot. But even idiots can have good
ideas once in a while. Whaddaya say? You wanna do it?”
“Don’t you have to go to school
for this? How are we gonna afford it?”
“I’ll cosign on a loan,” said
the father. “We’ll get you your schooling.”
“Really?” asked Gretel.
“If it gets you out of my house,
anything.”
So they came up with a plan.
First, Gretel had to get her regular driver’s license. Neither of the kids
owned a car, and only Hansel had his license. Any time either one of them
needed to go somewhere, Hansel would drive them in their dad’s old
turd-on-wheels. If Hansel didn’t feel like going anywhere and Gretel needed to
get somewhere, her reluctant father would usually end up taking her. They were
spoiled brats, it’s true; but they would be spoiled brats no longer.
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