not a pretty picture. not a good. not a bad. picture. but an argument.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

a conversation; and we eat cake






my son and i are doing what?  something over the kitchen table.  oh, i am cutting and lifting two pieces of McCain's cheap-ass marble cake out onto two mismatched saucers.  what are we talking about?  i can't remember.  but he says something about thirty years from now and i say, oh, wait, how old will i be?

oh, i remember now.  we have been to the library and we have taken out books to read.  he has appraised the return date and as i cut the cake he imagines aloud, what if they were stamped to be returned thirty years from today? 

again i try to tabulate, how old will i be? (what year is it?)  will i even be alive in thirty years?

he looks at me and says, mom, you'll be 72.  you're, like, healthy.  you should be alive, barring a car accident or a heart attack or, as he puts it, something stupid. 

what about murder, i ask?

oh, that would suck, he responds.  i mean, it would really suck, he adds for emphasis.  if i'm murdered, i want to be, like, shot dead, not cut up, or remember what happened to the guy in Fargo, in the wood chipper?  nothing like that.

ya, me too, i say, or, me either.

we eat our cake.