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The Flounder Family Ch 3

Chapter Three

Who Cares?

Tasha wondered if there wasn’t an easier way to learn history.  The chapter headings alone were enough to make her head spin.  It seemed that every chapter covered a massive amount of stuff and though she enjoyed the learning about the peculiar  death rituals in Egypt and the wacky ball games the Aztecs played where the losers got killed, she felt a yawn struggling to break free.  What did all this have to do with her?  She lived on the east side of a perfectly nice city where a nearby lake made the winters less severe and the summers less traumatic.  Kids played baseball in the summer and skated in the winter.  There were some murders here and there, but that was mostly in the inner city or on the north side.  Murders did happen - there wasn’t anything new about that – but not usually as a part of a game.  Tasha yawned again, loudly.

“Sorry, Tasha, if I am boring you.  But it just happens to be my job to teach you the high points of human history so that you can go out into the world and discover - it isn’t all high points.”

Sitting up straighter Tasha swallowed her next yawn.  “I’m not bored…well, not with you.  Just, I can’t get this stuff.”

“Can’t get this stuff?  Do you care to explain that?”  The teacher, Ms. Stern, couldn’t appear more open to enlightenment.

Tasha tried not to notice the silence in the room and she refused to notice the stares.  Well, they were all thinking the same thing, if they’d just be honest enough to admit it!  School was boring and that’s all there was to it.  But how to explain that dry unadulterated truth to Ms. Stern.

Tasha tried to sit up even straighter, her eyes were fixed on the teacher’s desk.  “It’s just that I’m not about to be buried by Egyptians or play ball with any Aztecs, so I don’t get why this matters to me.  yeah, they lived a long time ago and founded civilization, I get that, but why should I remember all the stuff they did?  It’s on-line you know.  Anyone can google it if they want to know.”

Ms. Stern sat on the edge of her desk but she did not appear deflated in the least though she was biting her lip.  “Tasha, don’t you care about anyone besides yourself?”

Tasha studied the question a moment.  She knew what she ought to say but she prided herself on her habit of blunt honesty.  “Sort of.  I care what happens to my Mom and dad.”

“Why?”

Stymied for the moment Tasha waited for an inspiration.  Ms. Stern stood back up.  “I don’t know this for a fact, but I think if you were to investigate your conscience, you’ll probably have to look that word up, you’d discover that the real reason you care about your Mom and Dad is because they care about you.  Really, because they are all that stand between you and a welfare agency.”  She turned back to her desk. ”Don’t you have a brother?”

Tasha’s frown forced her to blink.  Irritation was building and she wasn’t used to being irritated. ”well, yes, we call him Kiddo, and boy does he get into…”

“Don’t you care about him?”

Tasha pondered the question.  “Yeah, I’d miss him if he were gone.”

“Why?”

Tasha crossed her arms.  “He’s the family entertainment.”

“I thought so.”:

The words Tasha thought at that moment would have landed her in the principal’s office. She stared at Ms. stern and realized she hated the woman. Ms. Stern seemed to have realized the same thing.  She looked at the clock and pulled out the history book.  “Back to page 146 everyone.  Samantha, can you tell me what the Aztecs’ political system was like?”

Later that day Tasha walked into her kitchen browsing for something to eat.  The refrigerator was noticeably depleted.  “Mom, when is dad going to the store again?”

Dove walked into the room with an empty laundry basket in her hands. “Probably tomorrow.  It’s Friday and he’ll get off early.  Some game or something.”

“Good, I’ll starve to death with kiddo eating everything.”

“He’s not the only one who eats around here.  Besides, we’ll have dinner in a couple of hours, can’t you wait?”

“Mom?”

Dove realized the conversation was moving into new territory and she turned to face her daughter, the laundry basket left on the top step leading to the basement.  “Yep.”

“My teacher was mean to me today – for no reason.”

“Really?  Seems odd for a teacher to suddenly get mean.”

“Well, Ms. Stern did.  All because she thought I was bored with her history class.  It is boring you know – all about people who have been dead so long it might as well be a story someone made up.”

Dove smiled.  “Hard to connect the dots, isn’t it?”  Seeing her daughter’s puzzled frown she continued.  “People come from people and we all reach back to the dark ages…hard to believe but there it is.  You wouldn’t be here today if those people hadn’t lived in the past.”

“But who cares!”

Dove was about to answer when Jettison called from the living room.  “Dove!  Dove?”

“Here, honey.”  She looked at her daughter with a shrug knowing that she couldn’t come up with a suitable answer at the moment.  Jettison entered the room with two books under his arm.

“You’ll never believe what just happened?”

Dove groaned.  “Don’t tell me you locked the keys in the car again?”

Jettison blinked.  “No. There’s been a murder!”

Dove opened her mouth to speak but Kiddo bounced into the room.  “Mom, Mom, Guess what?  The Lawrences killed each other!”

Dove moved forward.  “Don’t say things like that, Kiddo, it isn’t funny!”

Jettison grimaced  “But it happens to be true.  Well, they didn’t exactly kill each other.  Mrs. Lawrence killed Mr. Lawrence and almost killed herself…but…well, she’s not dead, yet.”

Dove stared.  “Why?”

Jettison shook his head.  “I don’t know what happened.  I was just coming out of school when the police cars came racing in.  There was an after school meeting, about tomorrow’s game, and some kind of argument broke out and suddenly…I don’t know what happened, but by the time everything settled down, Mr. Lawrence was dead and Mrs. Lawrence was being taken away.”

Tasha leaned back against the counter. “Killed over a game?  Seems unbelievable.”

Dove shook her head.  “People do all sort of unbelievable things.  We just don’t usually care enough to know why.”

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