Four Months Ago

The other day I had another session with the guidance counselor, because the school's concerned with my "behavioral problems" or whatever. Really, I'm beginning to hate these robots more and more every day. What's even worse is that now that the man in the horn-rimmed glasses, my would-be father-in-law, is dead, I don't have anything on which to focus my unearthly rage. That sucks!

So my counselor is all like, "West, tell me about your family."

And I'm like, "Hell, no! I don't want to talk about my family. I try my hardest to avoid them. That's why I'm always flying around doing whatever I feel like!"

But then the counselor threatened my with detention again if I didn't cooperate, so I told her about my family Thanksgiving a few months ago.

You see, my family used to have big Thanksgiving dinners with our relatives back when we lived in St. Louis and everyone was nearby, but ever since we moved to Costa Verde it has only been the three of us for the holidays--me, Ma, and Pop.

I don't exactly hate my parents, but they are total robots! All they do is work, watch TV, and give me crap about my life. "West," they say, "you need to quit talking this science fiction nonsense and do better in school. All the Rosens have been well-adjusted, productive members of society, and we don't want you to have the reputation as this family's black sheep!"

And I always respond with something like, "Society is just the operating system that all you robots run on! And I'm not a sheep! You're sheep! Robot sheep!"

Of course, we had another big argument like this around Thanksgiving, because I let Ma sleep in and cooked vegetarian curry and flan instead of the traditional turkey dinner that Ma had planned. And then I insisted on watching the robot wars on Discovery Channel instead of the big football game. Finally they just kicked me out of the house for the rest of the day and I just flew around.

I didn't see my parents again until the next morning, after Ma and Pop got back from the holiday shopping they were programmed to do. Ma got mad at me because I smelled like smoke and she thought I had shoplifted a pack of cigarettes or something. What she didn't realize was that I had rigged up a bunch of remote-control toy robots to set fire to the Radio Shack before the holiday sale started.