The heinously evil mother sat her newly-minted 7-year-old down to write thank you notes to the people who had given him birthday presents. She’d purchased some cheery Snoopy note cards. She wrote out six different, short scripts on scrap paper for the child to copy onto each card. While the child was writing out the cards, the mother was addressing and stamping the envelopes, six in all.
“I HATE your stupid writing!” the child burst out while writing the first card. “I can’t read it.” (*slams a fist onto the kitchen table*)
“What can’t you read?” the mother asked. “I’ll tell you what it says.”
Frustration was building as the child continued to mutter and fist-pound but not identify what he couldn’t read. “This is just like cursive writing,” he said of the printed scripts. “I HATE your writing. Don’t ever write anything again!”
“Tell me what you need me to read,” the mother calmly repeated, looking over the scripts and recognizing that, indeed, when she had written the word “for” the “r” kind of resembled a “v” but thought everything else was fairly easy to make out.
But the child didn’t want the mother to help; the child wanted to complain.
“What? ANOTHER ONE?” he shouted as he was handed his fourth blank Snoopy card and accompanying script. “I HATE this.”
The mother began to get annoyed. “You’re lucky that you have the cards all written out and you just have to copy them and not figure out what you were going to write for each one,” she said, noting that the child’s writing was starting to deteriorate into scrawl. “Make sure to write nicely so people can read it. This is the least you can do for people who gave you a present.”
The criticism provoked the child even more, as he grew more and more agitated. “Why do I have to write what YOU say? They’re my letters.”
“Fine,” she replied, “write what you want.”
The kid wrote the next letter. It said: “Thank you for the chek.” (The original script said, “Thank you for thinking of me on my birthday and for the check.”)
The mother laughed. “That’s kind of short,” she remarked, getting a sinister kick out of this tedious, hard labor to which she was subjecting her youngest child.
“What?” he replied as she handed him another card. “MORE? (*pause for sniveling*) I’m going to throw up.”
The mother laughed again at the thought: Vomit-inducing thank note writing. “That would be a first,” she thought to herself.
When the child finally finished – slamming each thank card on the table with his sweaty hands – the mother put the notes in their respective envelopes and handed them back. “You can seal all of these and put them in the mailbox,” she said.
“Noooo!”
The mother, thoroughly amused, walked out of the room chuckling.
Image credit: Easy Free Printables.