Men, trash and flower cards

And why the words we choose matter

For as long as she can remember, Emily’s dad was a bit heavy-handed on the ‘None of your blooming business!’ bottle. She never actually saw the bottle, but there was always a not-her-business aura about him; and it was agitated. Emily made sure to keep her books out of his general vicinity and mostly relied on her sis, Phillipa, for cues on how to act around him.

George’s dad was a shouter, too. The type that shouted because you weren’t doing WHAT he told you to do THE WAY HE WANTED you to do it. And he was always telling people what to do. It was quite a stressful affair for the whole Baker family, but Mrs. Baker always maintained a brave pressed lip smile and gave her utmost to care for her family. Little George drew his mother detailed flower cards with silly notes and cheesy jokes, and that would make her laugh. George was always making jokes, actually.

It was just another night at Emily’s house, but then it seemed worse than usual. She could hear her dad shouting from the room again. This time Phillipa interfered. The shouting escalated, something crashed and Emily retreated into the corner, clutching her horse book tightly. Time warped and her focus grew hazy until eventually the view of Phillipa walking towards her emerged, her shoulders slumped. Her face was red but there were no more tears in her eyes, “Men are trash, Emily.”

The next day at break Emily was sitting with her friends. She opened her lunchbox with hopeful despondency and saw that her mother had packed the empty lunchbox from the day before, again. “Men are trash,” she told her friends in mock bravado. George flinched and looked down; his eyes teared up and he said nothing.

At home, George started on another card. He took extra care with this one. He was carving out a white flower in the paper with a blue pencil background. He drew in the yellow core to complete his delicate white lily drawing.

“Dear Emily,” he wrote.

“I wanted to ask if you can maybe stop saying men are trash…”

He paused; and started scratching out his message with his blue background pencil.

“This card is a bloomin’ joke, hey!?” he wrote instead.

“Renoncules, buttercup!”

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Special thanks to

Anna Mackenzie

for giving your thoughts on this!

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