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“Where do you think you are going, young man?” His mother’s shrill matronly voice cut the air just as Merald cracked the front door.
“Out.” The teen rotated toward the kitchen on the heel of one foot. His mother stalked out of her personal realm, crossing her arms and tapping her foot, waiting. “To a friend’s house.”
“Not like that you’re not.”
“God, Mom.” Merald swallowed as his mother’s eyes glowed red at the oath. “Gosh?” Her nose flare stopped. Known to his friends by the nickname Bubba, Merald returned to full steam, forgetting his life had been in danger just a moment before. “I’m eighteen.”
Joannah shook her graying head. “That only makes it worse. You are not leaving the house with that on a Saturday night. Hand it over.” She put out her hand.
“It’ll only be the guys.” He whined, still stuck, as most high schoolers, between child and adult.
“To start,” the wrinkles on her forehead met as his mother scowled. “But not likely at the end. Promise not to leave the first house until you are ready to come home and not call anyone else to come over?”
Bubba eye’s dropped to the floor to study the hole in the toe of his shoe. “Ummm … yes?”
The older woman’s voice firmed to granite. “Hand it over.”
“Dad,” Bubba cried out as he saw his father start to step out of the living room. The older man ducked back a second, then shrugged and braced the family dragon in the hallway.
“Yes Bubba.”
“Tell mom I am old enough.”
Charles closed his eyes, sighed, and asked. “Old enough for what?”
“To leave with my dick intact.”
His father pinched the bridge of his nose. “Son, we have been over this. It is just better to leave that at home.”
“But all my friends get to go out with theirs.”
“I’m not the judge of other parents,” the woman interrupted, “but no male in my house walks out the door with a penis in his pants. Men just don’t know how to take care of them and do stupid things just because they are attached.”
The father snorted a short laugh. “She is absolutely right. Once, and females weren’t even involved but beer was, I — Ouch!” Hopping on one foot, Merald’s dad banged around the hallway until coming to rest against a wall. He brought up his injured bare foot studying the top for marks. “Case in point, son, dicks, even in the house, can be dangerous. Damn it, I know better than brag about –“
The red-eyed death stare stopped him midsentence.
“I’ll go back to my crossword.”
Merald’s shoulders dropped as he lost his only possible ally. He unzipped his jeans and yanked off the detachable member and handed it over to his mom’s open hand.
“May I go now?”
“Yes sweetie, curfew is ten minutes past midnight.” Joannah kissed her oldest on the cheek. “Have fun.”
(word 495; first published 12/18/2013; republished new blog format 10/21/2018)