Your mother is so lame…
that she obviously doesn’t understand you at all. I mean, it’s not like you’re six years old anymore or anything. Yet she still insists on treating you like a child and not a capable and autonomous human being. Come on, right? It’s so lame how just because of that one time in 7th grade when you happened to mention that robots were rad that she still now to this day always gets you robot-themed birthday presents and leaves newspaper clippings about robots on the kithen counter for you to find. You’ve grown as a person and have diverse and mature interests, how difficult can that be to comprehend? What is she, an idiot? You’re on the lacrosse team, for Christ’s sake! You have a girlfriend! Enough already with the fucking robots! And it’s not like your dad is any help at all, wrapped up as he is with his woodworking in the garage. I mean, geez, he hardly comes in to dinner anymore and so most nights it’s just the two of you, you and your mother, sitting there quietly eating the nutritious yet tasty meal she’s spent two hours preparing. And for a while, all you can hear are the sounds of your combined mastication, interrupted by short, whining bursts from your father’s table saw or lathe. Finally, over desert, your mother will mention something to you about how she can’t wait until you invent her a robot to help with all the housework and then she laughs a little, but her laughter is tired and thin. You’ll exhale forcefully, disapprovingly, and scrape your knife across the china and, finally, your mother will get it. She’ll look up at you and wonder where her sweet boy went, her young son, and, in fact, her husband, her family. How did it end up this way? she’ll ask quietly, as if not wanting to bother you with it. She’ll look outside through the large bay window in the dining room and see the indifferent wind blow a solitary piece of newspaper down the street and across the subdivision. In the garage your father fires up his router. No one says anything for a long while, you just sit there as the last few string beans grow cold on your plate.
