Sometimes I Wonder If He's Worth It, And Then I Read Back Over 10 Years Of Blog Posts And Realize That He IS!

You know that book, The Giver, that's kind of ambiguous at the end?

There's a story here in Hillmomba called The Taker. And it is not at all ambiguous in the end. In fact, it is downright predictable. At the end of The Taker (at the end of every chapter, too) you can be sure that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is missing something that once was hers, courtesy of Farmer H.

Just this morning, I reached for my red Solo cup to take my medicine. I do that every morning. Same red Solo cup, sitting on the kitchen counter near the wooden paper plate holder that says "Everyday China." My mom gave it to me. Don't be hatin'. No need to use a different red Solo cup every day. It's only water. And my own two lips. It's not like I'm Lucy Van Pelt, just kissed by dog lips, and need hot water and disinfectant and iodine to get rid of the dog germs. No sirree, Bob! It's not like I go around chewing on my sweet, sweet Juno's nose every morning before meds. The same red Solo cup can last for days, weeks, months, years... Unless Farmer H is up to his shenanigans.

So I told him, pointedly, as he reclined in the La-Z-Boy and I foraged for a new red Solo cup in the pantry

"Funny how my red Solo cup is gone. The one I left sitting right here on the kitchen counter. The one I take my medicine with every morning. I don't suppose you'd know anything about that, though, would you? How my red Solo cup could just disappear overnight."

"Oh, sure. I took it."

"Thank you! I knew you did."

"Yeah. Uh huh. Blame everything on me. I took it."

"I know you did. And I wish you'd stop doing that! Just because you're too lazy to walk to the pantry and get your own red Solo cup doesn't mean I should have to walk to the pantry and get a new red Solo cup when I left a perfectly good red Solo cup sitting right here on the kitchen counter, where it DISAPPEARED!"

The thing is, Farmer H did not give a true confession, or even act sorry about it, but instead gave a sarcastic faux confession, even though we BOTH KNOW he's the one who took my red Solo cup. And to rub salt in my festering red Solo cup wound, we are almost out of red Solo cups! Only about five left in the pack in the pantry. AND I was in The Devil's Playground, purveyor of fine red Solo cups, only yesterday!

I wonder if my not-for-young-adults book, The Taker, will be a new classic.