The Meeting

Winner -- 2/6/09

ID: 896794   (Rated: 13+) Daily Flash Fiction Challenge  Enter your story of 300 words or less. Note new starting time! by arakun the twisted raccoon

         I’m early, nobody else is here yet.  Mom isn’t here yet.  Good.

         Church basements all smell alike, dust, old books and a faint aroma, no longer appetizing, left over from the corned beef and cabbage supper they had here last week. 

         I’m here to get Mom off my back about it.  I’m certainly not doing it for Robby.  “Go to a meeting,” Mom pleaded.  “Go to one meeting, is that too much to ask?  Learn something about it and maybe you’ll understand why Robby is the way he is.”

         I understand why Robby is “the way he is.”  First of all he got spoiled rotten because he was the baby and the only boy, the child of their old age.  They couldn’t bear to discipline him or tell him no.  He got everything handed to him.  We all had to earn our first wheels but Robby got a car for a sixteenth birthday present and wrecked it in a week.

          Nothing was ever Robby’s fault.  When he misbehaved it was my fault because “You were supposed to be watching him.”  Mom believed everything he said.  He failed the test because an unfair teacher didn’t like him.  The other kid started the fight.  Whatever.  That’s why Robby is “the way he is” because a favorite child doesn’t have to grow up. 

         Robby dropped out of college, lost every job he ever had.  Now he’s what Mom calls “the way he is” and she wants me to go to meetings to help fix him.  I’m not the one who needs to go to meetings. I’m not the one with the Problem.

         So now I’ll find out what an Al-Anon meeting is all about.

282 words