Lauren Wille

I was woken up at the crack of 10:30 AM Saturday by my mother. She was wondering if I wanted to go to an outdoor mall with her and my dad. I can already recall why I love going home so much…no sleeping past 10:30 and guilt trips when I don’t want to hang out with my family. 

“No.” 

“Why not?”

“Because I’m sleeping.”

“But it’s 10:30!”

I began to explain to my mother that the night before had been rough. I had been drinking for hours. Then I went out to the bar where I continued to get annihilated. She stopped me mid-sentence. 

“Do you want to come or not?”

“UGHKJNW;fdl. What for?”

“Your dad wants to go to the apple store to look at iPads.”

Are you kidding me? Why does he want to get one of those? Is it written on his birth certificate that every single time a new toy comes out he has to buy it? It doesn’t even stand up. How do you type on a device that is completely flat? 

It turns out that the apple store didn’t have any iPads for my dad. Apple made a deal that customers could put them on reserve as long as they picked them up before 3:00 PM. After that, they were up for grabs. Poor dad. No iPad. 

Later that evening I was going through my pictures on the kitchen computer when a picture of a massive poop popped up. I acted like it didn’t happen and quickly moved on to the next photo, a picture of a cheeseburger. 

“What the hell was that?” My mom screeched. “Go back!”

Feeling no sham whatsoever, I went back to the picture of my stool. It had to be over a foot long. 

“OH GOD.” 

I laughed and blamed it on her. She was the one who wanted to see it. My mother retreated up to the bedroom and I turned to my dad and tried to make him feel bad.

“I heard you didn’t an iPad. Man, that sucks.”

He walks over to the kitchen table and starts rummaging through piles of old magazines and other junk that accumulates there. I don’t know what he’s looking for, but I continue to ramble on about how dumb the iPad is and how I can’t believe anyone would actually spend $500 on that thing, and I am glad my dad didn’t get one because he would play with it for about an hour then stash it away with the rest of his forgotten gadgets. 

And then I see it. The iPad. In the flesh. He got one. 

“Why. did you. do that?” 

“Lauren, remember that time when you just had to take a picture of your shit?”

I stare at him. 

“Yeah. It was kind of like that. I went to the apple store to play with an iPad, and I just had to have it.” 

My dad. So wise. Comparing electronics to poop.