The children are gathered out in the schoolyard, wielding the weapons of their fathers. A belt, a wooden spoon, a rubber sandal, a tightly rolled Sunday newspaper (reinforced with coupon inserts), and the time-honored bare hands.
A sun there, in the sky. The fathers look on from the sidelines, cigars as thick as Twinkies held between teeth, hedging their bets.
The competition this year has never been stiffer. Bobby is a goner. Mason is proverbial toast. Rory’s father has no other choice but to bet against his own son. A feather duster? What were they thinking?
Multiple factors are at play, however. Johnny’s arsenal of household projectiles (TV remote, ash trays, beer bottles, a frying pan) may offer an advantage in terms of distance but in such close combat will be no match against Casey’s stun gun (along with his expertise in nervous-system hotspots, as taught firsthand by his father, the local chief-of-police), much less Rosalie’s tube sock full of batteries.
Then again, to win it’ll take more than just brawn. A few schoolteachers, with insider knowledge of each child’s total-factor stats, appear suspiciously confident in “Little Debbie” Fubbins, armed with no more than a hand mirror and the dead eyes of a blackmailing alligator.
And so, where are the mothers? Standing behind their children, endowing them with the invisible bludgeons of psychological warfare, of passive aggression, emotional projection, manipulation, defense mechanisms via delegitimization, military-grade vulnerability honing, victim-blaming, -playing, -making, guilt tripping, gaslighting, and all other means of homeschooled head fuckery.
The bets are in, tallied in sidewalk chalk. It’s anyone’s game.
The schoolyard fills with the first bell’s digital gong—the children don’t budge a muscle. Their parents are shouting to make them proud, to make a move, but the kids remain frozen. Helpless. Sniffling, fish-legged, powerless, scared little babies, the parents taunt them before turning on each other.
“Helicopter coddler!”
“This is all your fault!”
“What did I say about giving kisses goodnight!”
“Ice cream after dinner, for finishing dinner? Now look at him!”
The paternal mud is slung. Blame tossed, ad nauseam.
A second bell—the late bell—rings. The children are at a loss.
A father grabs his weapon (a hardback copy of Moby Dick) from his son and turns toward his wife, who is armed with a dining-room chair.
“Now watch, kids,” he says. “We’ll show you how it’s done.”
Stephen Wack is an Atlanta-based writer. He earned an undergraduate degree in Neuroscience from the University of Georgia, where he briefly interned at the college’s literary magazine, The Georgia Review. His work has previously appeared in Five:2:One Magazine, After Happy Hour Review, and is forthcoming in The Hunger and Cleaver Magazine. Stephen is funny and cool and an absolute smokeshow. Get in touch here: @stephen_wack / [email protected]
