Moral grape

I asked my son if he wanted to come to the store with me. He asked if he could bring his unicycle. I asked, did he really want to bring his unicycle? He said yes. I said it was ok if he admitted he didn't want to bring it after all, I wouldn't get mad at him. He said he really did want to bring his unicycle to the store. I said forget it, I didn't want to go to the store anymore.

We did end up going, him with his unicycle. He showed me a new trick he taught himself. Someone threw a soda at him at hit him right in the chest. I just put my head down and kept walking, pretended I didn't know him.

Some people and I rented a limo. We didn't have any particular destination, we just thought it would be fine to ride around for a while. The limo driver has to take you wherever you want to go, that's the amazing thing about it. We told him we wanted to go uptown, so he took us uptown. We told him we wanted to go to the east side, so he took us to the east side. We told him we wanted him to drive into the river, so he swerved off the road and drove us into the river. We all sat still and listened to the car drift to the bottom.

My son told me he wanted to be homeless for a day for a school project. Ten years old -- can you believe it? Anyway I told him it was a morally disgusting idea -- reducing the plight of the underclass to a game, pretending to understand it after one safety-netted night, turning real people's lives into a mawkish class presentation on street life or something. I told him it was typical sheltered upper-middle-class ignorance and disrespect, and I was disappointed in him. Instead he grew some bean plants on the radiator. One day I was moving a bookshelf and spilled the plants onto the ground. I tried to scoop them back into their little styrofoam cups but they were beyond saving. He got a check-plus.

We drove up to New Hampshire one day to enjoy the bomb-ass foliage they have this time of year. I'd barely gotten onto the highway before I looked back and saw everyone was asleep. I pulled over and took the duck out of the trunk and ate it as fast as I could. When we got up to New Hampshire and everyone asked where the duck was, I played dumb. I caught my wife's eyes flashing to the steering wheel, which was smeared with grease.