Hello again. Wright here. The subject of this story does not follow the normal chronological progression of stories that I have been telling lately, but it is a subject that is on my mind so I thought I would address it. The subject of today’s post is broken promises or empty promises. I like the term broken promises better than empty promises because it more accurately describes what is really happening in the given situation. These broken promises are promises that parents make in the heat of the moment to their young children, knowing full well that they never intend to make good on the promise. Case in point: parent A (let’s call that parent mom) goes out grocery shopping and buys her young daughter Pedialyte and tells her young daughter, whom she has with her, this is your drink. When mother and daughter get to the check out and mother pays for the Pedialyte, daughter wants to carry the Pedialyte out to the car because it is her drink. That makes sense. Right?!? Of course it does. Her mom has promised her that drink. However, there are evil forces at work behind the scenes. What are those evil forces you ask? I am getting to those evil forces. Just hold onto your shorts. This is a fast-moving train. Unbeknownst to mother and daughter as they drive back to the house, parent B (let’s call that parent dad) is having a bad day at work. First, he showed up late and his boss decided to take a chunk out of his ass. Actually, his boss decided to take a rather large chunk out of his ass because that was the third time this week he had shown up late for work. So, naturally, dear old dad started cursing under his breath about how his boss was the biggest asshole in the world. Maybe he was. And maybe he wasn’t. Who knows? The point is dear old dad was blaming the boss because he was late. That’s a typical response. But dad’s woes don’t end there. Oh hell no. You see, when dear old dad left the house, he was already running late for work so he forgot his lunch. Yes, that’s right. You guessed it. Dear old dad normally brought his own lunch to work. Not today. Cuz dear old dad was running late. Solution. Dear old dad just decided to steal some leftovers out of the company refrigerator. Not a very wise move. Why? Cuz who in the hell knew how long that shit had been in there? I sure as hell didn’t. Do you? I didn’t think so. Yeah. That shit smelled bad. Real bad. In fact, it smelled worse than dead skunk. But hey, dad was hungry. So he heated that shit up and ate it. Bad plan. Really bad plan. It didn’t take long before his stomach started pitching a fit. Not long at all. Oh hell no. By about 1:30 PM, he had to tell the boss that he had to go home sick because he had already been to the toilet twice. Oh yeah. It was coming out at both ends. He had diarrhea and he was puking his guts out. He barely reached the house before another wave hit his ass. When he got to the house, his first stop was the toilet. He was sicker than a dog. Except, I have never really seen a sick dog except once. I don’t really know why they have that expression, “Sicker than a dog.” Dogs don’t seem to get sick until they get old and just die. Unless some sonofabitch decides to poison them. And like I said, I did see one sick dog once. And that dog was poisoned by an evil, wicked, mean, and nasty person. And that dog was so damn sick that it was shitting blood. That dog came within an inch of losing its life. It just never was the same after being poisoned. Dear old dad wasn’t quite that sick, but he was pretty got-damn sick. Yeah. He was puking his guts out and he was praying to the porcelain gods at the same time. I got a funny feeling that those porcelain gods weren’t listening to his prayers. Oh hell no. It didn’t take long before dear old dad was dehydrated and feeling pretty damn miserable. While dear old dad was in the toilet commiserating about all of his woes and sorrows, mother and daughter returned from shopping and daughter put her Pedialyte in the refrigerator at home. Well, it wasn’t long before dear old, dehydrated dad managed to crawl out to the refrigerator to see what he could drink to replenish his fluids. He was hoping and praying that he would find a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. But dear old dad just wasn’t that lucky. But he spied that bottle of Pedialyte and thought, “Hallelujah, hallelujah! Praise the Lord! My prayers have been answered.” And he snatched that bottle of Pedialyte out of the refrigerator, fumbled with the childproof cap and seal for a minute, finally got the bottle open, and proceeded to take satisfying gulps of that delicious nectar. How sweet it was! At that very moment, his daughter came out to the kitchen and caught him drinking her Pedialyte. She exclaimed in a loud crying voice, “Hey! That’s mine!” Dear old dad responded, “I’ll buy you a pony.” There is the broken promise. If you are a parent, you know Goddamn good and well that dear old dad is not going to buy his kid a pony. Here is why. There’s no place to park a pony in town, even if the city ordinances allow it. And most city ordinances do not allow horses to be stabled inside the city limits. Then, there is the slight problem of feeding that horse. Those sons of bitches eat like a horse, literally. They will eat you out of house and home. And they shit up a storm. They walk ten feet and shit a mountain. They walk ten more feet and shit another mountain. I ain’t lying. Then, here’s the problem of finding a place to exercise the damn thing. You can just hook it on a leash and take it out for a walk like a dog. Oh hell no. And you sure as hell can’t take it to the park to ride it. So, you know damn well that dear old dad ain’t buying his kid a pony. At best. That kid is going to get a wooden stick horse, or maybe a wooden rocking horse. But more likely, that kid is going to get one of those little hard plastic ponies that cost a buck at some cheap toy store. The kid will probably play with that pony once then the goddamn thing will lay on the floor right where mom or dad will step on the goddamn thing. And when you step on it, that sonofabitch will hurt and leave a mark. Fun. That right there is a broken promise. And parents do it all the goddamn time. And they get away with it because their kids are young and gullible and believe them. And those poor kids end up caught in the travesty that ends up being their broken promised exercise in futility.
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