Platitudes

Young Lady Reading a Red Book
by Amalia Suruceanu

Where did you find this card?  It is scrumptious — hand-made paper and a soft watercolor image that I think might have been an original.  You didn’t make this, did you?  Was this all your handiwork?

If so, I’ve never had a handmade card deliver an I’m breaking up with you message before. 

Your card arrived in the mail today.  I noticed the pink envelope first, and then my heart beat faster when I saw it was your handwriting. 

You’ve always been an original. 

My heart stopped for a minute after I read the first line. Although those opening words were innocuous, I knew what was coming.  I knew as soon as I saw your writing on the envelope. 

I knew. 

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Scoot

Photo by Omar Ramadan on Unsplash

The kids were so excited to come home from school to find Scoot sitting on the porch.  His backpack was on the floor, and he was practicing the chords for Folsom Prison Blues. Marianne managed to tear herself away long enough to let me know with the required after-school phone call to check in.

“Mom, guess what!  Uncle Scoot is here! “

At that news, I wrapped the coiled cord of the business’s landline around my neck and pulled. I often did this as a joke to amuse my colleagues, but today?  Today I did want to strangle myself. 

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The uterus is not a homing device.

Photo by Mika Ruusunen on Unsplash

“The uterus is not a homing device,” Rosanne Barr screeched.  I was channel surfing and happened upon her eponymous sitcom just as she uttered that line.  I had never heard the saying before. It turns out that it is an old feminist slogan that is considered overused. 

I laughed out loud.  I did. I sat back and enjoyed the rest of the show.

I’m not much of a television watcher, but that one line hooked me.  Barr was blazingly funny and insightful until she wasn’t. I was a faithful viewer until she, and the show, went off the rails.

Neither my now-ex-husband nor my son can find their own asses with two hands and a flashlight.  I was the designated Finder of Lost Things. By the time I heard Rosanne say, “The uterus is not a homing device,” I was weary of always and forever spending my free time trying to find their lost stuff.

Something snapped, and one time, I quietly responded, “I don’t know where your jockstrap is. I put it away the last time I used it.” And that was my standard response unless the missing item was something important to me.

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The Girl in Black

Photo by Gioele Fazzeri on Unsplash

Dear Diary,

They think I don’t hear them.  They think I’m oblivious and lost in a haze of weed.  They think I’m a retro Goth.  

I don’t care what my senior class thinks.  I quit caring about sixth grade when the cliques got serious.  I really stopped caring when my great-grandfather died. I wore black to his funeral and have worn black ever since.

They all have no idea, and I like it that way.  I’m not just an introvert, I’m very private.  I don’t even talk to the therapist my social worker has been making me see for two years.  The one my state insurance pays for because we don’t have any money.

I don’t care what my family thinks.  I was a mistreated child that nobody could be bothered to rescue.  My summers with Great-Grandfather are the only reason I’m not a real mess.

I don’t care what anyone thinks.

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