i didn't mean to break it

It is amazing the number of clever profanities that pop into your head after you resolve to divorce yourself from hatred and cruelty, it is such an effective stimulus of synchronicity. Instead of giving voice to that angrily suppressed sub-ego, you let your limbs go limp like pale, straw hair. Quiet flutter of butterfly wings. Gently settling silt in an opalescent stream. You use words like 'bother' and 'darling,' both of which are terrible epithets only if you are dying in the arms of British nobility.

Dad, I dropped the bag of fruit. All the glass jars are broken in the garage.

Oh, darling. Serene as snow.

Dad, I don't understand my math homework. I hate math. I'm just going to play Minecraft.

Oh, bother. Steady as the tide.

Dad, while you were cleaning, I broke the other jars in the kitchen.

I'm not going to tell you what I'm thinking right now. I am not going to tell her what I'm thinking right now.

At work, I read about Australian fauna and double contractions and Baader-Meinhof (which I wouldn't've guessed has been deleted from Wikipedia) and amidst it all remembered that there is an old Romanian proverb that holds that shards bring good luck, particularly at the beginning of a year or a wedding or some other noted event.

And I remembered that 150 years ago people of my social standing usually died of dysentery and everybody put coins in their mouths and most of all that profanity you'd've heard me utter heretofore hadn't even been invented yet, which is why people never seemed to say much back then and no one smiled in photos.

Driving home today, as all the cars passed by on the interstate, I looked down at the speedometer and saw I was holding steady at 55 though it reads all the way to 130.