Monday, October 06, 2008

MY KID SHOOTS HER PARENTS



I'm too sleepy to put up a proper post, so I'll just relate an incident that happened 15 minutes ago, just before I sat down to the computer.

I'd just watched a TV movie with my wife and daughter called "Five Little Pigs," an adoption of the Agatha Christie book of the same name. In the film ace detective Hercule Poirot is hired to find the truth about the fatal poisoning of a famous painter which resulted in the conviction and hanging of his wife. The whole thing happened years before but the daughter feels her mother was innocent and wants the real killer brought to justice.

DON"T READ PAST THIS POINT IF YOU DON"T WANT TO KNOW THE END OF THIS STORY.

The damning evidence against the mother is that immediately after her husband's death she was seen wiping fingerprints off the poisoned beer bottle, and frantically throwing things into the lake. It looked like she poisoned her husband and was getting rid of evidence.





WARNING: I REVEAL THE END HERE!!!!

Well, it turns out that the mother really was innocent. When she realized a murder had been committed she assumed her 15 year-old daughter had done it, and changed the evidence to make it appear that she, the mother, had done it. She knew the daughter was a good person and would regret what she'd done, so the mother decided to bring the blame on herself. She even allowed herself to be hanged for it! I...er...changed the details a little to simplify it, but that's the gist of it. It was a good story!

Anyway, after the film I said to my wife: "Wow! I understand that reasoning completely! If our kid shot us impulsively, I'd do the same thing. In the moments before death I'd try to bugger up the evidence to deflect attention away from the kid. She's a good egg and would surely regret the crime later. If we're going to die anyway, we might as well set it up so our kid has some kind of life after we're gone."

My wife said, "That's ridiculous. Our kid is an adult now. If she kills somebody she should take responsibility for it."





"No," I said, "that's too severe! With my last ounce of energy I'd dip my finger in my blood and write on the floor: 'the killer was a pickle-nosed guy with a gold tooth who shot us through the window.' "

My wife said, "Well then I'd write with my blood: 'Nope, our daughter did it!' "

I replied that with a miraculous final burst of energy I'd write, "Don't listen to my wife, She's addled from the pain. Seek the guy with the nose."





My wife replied that she'd write: "I am NOT addled! Our daughter did it!"

Needless to say, it was frustrating to have my final testament contradicted this way. Our daughter was silent up til now, listening to us argue. I wondered whose side she would take. Finally she said, "Mom's right! If I was mean enough to shoot you, I'd deserve to take the fall!"

Not the answer I was looking for, but I somehow got a good feeling from it, as if maybe we'd raised our daughter better than I'd realized.




OK, I'm going to bed!

10 comments:

Jenny Lerew said...

I agree with the females.
You really do think much too sentimentally! ; D

Max Ward said...

You have a funny family there. If only they would let you write about them more.

kellie said...

I wonder would all your reactions have been different if it was li'l Oedipus Fitzgerald who bumped you off instead of darling Electra Fitzgerald?

Anonymous said...

Moo-ha-ha-ha! Little did Mon-sewer E-dee ree-a-lize, heez dotter end heez weef iz in cahoots mit moi - moo-hoo-hoo-ha!

pappy d said...

What if your only hope to save your daughter was to kill your wife so she couldn't get the last word?

Stephen Worth said...

Let your daughter know that if she is going to allow for that much writing in blood, she' going to have to generate a lot of it. A simple gunshot wound won't be enough.

Thanks for the great story!
Steve

Anonymous said...

To say nothing of the pickle-nosed cop with the gold tooth who happened to arrive with the black and white unit to investigate the crime and got promptly plugged by L.A.'s finest when he became nervous reading your bloody note.

Eddie Fitzgerald said...

Steve: Gunshot wounds don't leave much blood!? I didn't know that.

Trevor Thompson said...

Steve's right.

In order to have the paragraph of information contained within your final domestic squabble, your daughter would've had to go full on The Bride from 'Kill Bill', and in that instance, no jury would find innocence there.

But it's an interesting thought.

My mother would've sided with you, Eddie. Her kids could do no wrong in her eyes.

- trevor.

David Germain said...

You know that everything in the bowels gets released once the body dies. If you want to get the last word in on your wife, wait for her to expire and then write a final message with her......

Or just wear a bullet-proof vest from now on just to be safe.