The Man's Favorite Pastime

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His father judged him. It seemed, sometimes, to be the man's favorite pastime. When he did not meet unspoken standards—which was often—it provoked anger. Yelling. Namecalling. Violence.

Reminding his father that he, too, was a grown man only heightened the disappointment. He returned home from work without having fulfilled the father's ambitions for him, so the reminder only drew abuse that much sooner. Sometimes, sooner was a relief.

Now a full-grown man, he could fight back, and he told his father so. This only provoked laughter. His father called him weak and told him he couldn't fight back. In truth, he couldn't. The few times he tried, longs years of a child's harsh conditioning softened his blows and slowed his defenses. He was weak, because his father had weakened him.

He strove to please his father, to meet those standards the old man held ever higher above his head. Some days he earned his way free of the beatings. Some days he won grudging, backhanded praise. But not every day. He knew he should have done better, and earlier. He also knew that failing in the past was no good reason for failing now.

One day, he didn't come home.

A Sassy Nation

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When a rifle bullet neatly assassinated the American president in 2025, it seemed at first the same sort of anomaly that killed Lincoln, Garfield, or Kennedy. When the next died six months later in the same fashion, people became nervous. They became accusatory.

They became preemptive.

Murder of the opposition's presidents and candidates became business as usual. It narrowed the field faster than debates or polls ever did. The average tenure for an American president from 2027 to 2039 was eight and a half months.

Each side lost their best and brightest to the bloody competition until neither party wanted their best to run. In back rooms over sweaty handshakes, they agreed that candidates would be off limits. Neither wanted to give up the option to murder a disliked president.

Surprising the politically unsavvy, the nation passed a constitutional amendment declaring candidacy involuntary upon nomination by a quorum of one's party. For the party's least-liked, most-troublesome members the office became at best a threat, at worst a tacit death sentence. In the end, it came down to the will of the people: Which party did the nation want to chastise with a death that year?

Which way do you vote?

Reaching Your Sensitive Child

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"Unnnnnnnnnnnh." James Ganth groaned, brushed his hair out of his face, and hung his head over the book he was trying to read.

"Trouble, hon?" His wife Sandy looked up from her own book at the kitchen table next to him. Her smile was weary, a good face put on to bolster the both of them but barely hanging on.

"It's this..." He gestured at the book, which flipped closed when he let go of it. Reaching Your Sensitive Child declared the title. "It's just so hard to read."

The smile slipped further. "Is it harder than another ten years of fighting with Jimmy? Of screaming matches and epic stubbornness battles?"

James knew the right answer. "No. I know. Just, I get to vent, right?"

Sandy smiled at him with a touch more life. "Of course you do, hon." She returned to her own book titled Blowing Up the Parenting Myth. "Maybe keep it in longer than five minutes next time."

Jimmy silently ascended the stairs where he'd listened in on his parents. Safely in his room a moment later, he slipped a book out from under his mattress: Quieting the Anxious Parent. It was time to ready step three.

The Tooth Hidden There

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Howie slipped a hand under his pillow to touch the tooth hidden there. With eyes he almost couldn't hold open, he looked up at his mother. "Where does the tooth fairy take the teeth?"

His mother leaned close. "I'll tell you a secret. It's not really a tooth fairy. Actually, the bed keeps the tooth."

"What? But where—"

"No one knows. Some say inside the bed, some say in a secret realm only beds can reach."

"No, where does it get the quarters?"

"Oh! It gets them from the couch. One of the reasons the couch is always stealing change from our pockets. Haven't figured out what the couch gets out of the trade, though."

"Why do they want teeth? That's weird."

"Once they have enough of your teeth, they can chew you up with them. G'night, my sweet."

He called out to her at the door. "That can't be true. What about adults? They'd be chewed."

"Beds have to leave some alive to have more kids, right? Hey, congratulations on your last baby tooth."

Wide, trembling eyes watched the sliver of light from the hall slim down to nothing. A stomach growled, and Howie wasn't sure it was his.