This is the scene: three generations of women are sitting at a table, post dinner. The nearly-four-year-old daughter is sitting opposite her early 30’s mother, while the grandmother-whose-age-shall-not-be-divulged-even-approximately sits at the end of the table, between them. Among the debris of dinner, there is a little bowl with some melting ice cream in it, and a spoon. There are a few other people at the table, but apart from the weird man sitting at the head, everyone else is immaterial to the following dialogue, apart from their close observation of the proceedings.
Let’s call the daughter Mary, the mother Margaret and the grandmother Mavis.
Mary is playing with a (clean) spoon and is about to put it into the ice cream bowl, which already contains a spoon.
Margaret: Don’t put that spoon in there, eh. There’s one in there already.
Mary stares directly into her mother’s stern face. Her own face is completely expressionless.
Margaret: Mary, did you hear me?
Mary’s chubby, nearly-four-year-old hand slowly raises from the table, grasping the spoon. Her poker face only barely displays subtle signs of defiance.
Margaret: Mary.
Margaret’s eyes begin to narrow. She and Mary are staring unswervingly at each other. Mary’s hand begins a slow movement toward the ice cream bowl. She is not looking away from her mother. Margaret’s eyes get narrower and narrower; her face gets redder and redder. Mary’s spoon continues its measured, steady journey towards the ice cream bowl.
Margaret: Mary.
Mavis is looking on in obvious delight. Her eyes move from her daughter to her granddaughter. All we can see in her face is teeth. Mary’s spoon has arrived at the ice cream bowl and, in a very deliberate motion, dips into the ice cream. There is steam coming out of Margaret’s ears; her face is on fire and her eyes are so narrow that it would seem a car jack may be necessary to ever open them again. Mary, still gazing into her mother’s deadly face, brings the spoon to her mouth and, almost absent-mindedly, licks the ice cream off it.
The air around the table is tense and cold. Mavis, however, is looking on with relish and grinning a grin that would make a Cheshire cat jealous.
Weird Man at the Head of the Table: What’s going on down there, Mavis?
Mavis (in the smuggest of tones of pure enjoyment): Payback!
The entire company erupts in laughter.
FIN
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4 wonderful people responded... will you?:
ROFL haha
Yep that's the way it works. Anytime I complain to my Godmother about my girls she simply states that my mother in laughing in heaven somewhere.
I woulda just move the bowl and eat the ice-cream and stare at the child with glee.
I love to tease children. I have a friend who's a mother, she's the same as me, so it can't be that it's because I ain't have children.
And is just a spoon, ow, is just a spoon, save the power struggles for the bigger things.
WOW 135 different countries flags, its amazing, I shall have to keep trying to add more, as I have just 100.
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