another bootstrap murder

“You look tired, hon.”

“Yeah, I’m not feeling great. Spring allergies.”

“I have spring and fall allergies. Hard to think straight when your face is dripping, I take fexofenadine and something my naturopath gave me, expensive, but worth it, though this week I ran out and I haven’t had a chance to refill because last week, I lost my cat, Marmalade, who I’ve had since she was a kitten,15 years I had her, I loved that cat like a parent loves a child, probably more, and you know what, I couldn’t believe this, she died exactly 7 days after the anniversary of losing my husband to a rare flesh-eating bacteria, the poor man suffered like you wouldn’t believe, and the doctors, the doctors, they just threw their hands up and watched him die because these days, they’re only it for the money, everyone’s in it for the money, moneymoneymoney, not me, I was a teacher for 35 years and I was there for those kids, I don’t care who they were, what they looked like, black, white, green, purple, rich, poor, and now, just look at them, these modern kids couldn’t care less if there was a mannequin standing in front of them, all they care about is their phones, they don’t go outside, they don’t see the sun, they don’t talk to each other, they just sit and stare at their screens and eat junk food and do the tik tok and you wonder why there are all these school shootings, these kids are half mad from staring at their phones and playing video games, terribly violent games, fake games that look real as life, and the whole point is to kill kill kill, what do you think that does to their brain, in some you have to even kill police, on purpose, can you imagine that, it wasn’t like that when I was a kid, we respected authority, we had to work, we had to help around the house, we had to be polite at the dinner table, we had to shovel hay until our hands blistered, I had one friend, Frank Carter, who lost his arm up to his elbow to a brush mower, poor guy, but he did okay for himself, left farming for Wall Street and now he’s rolling in the dough, in fact, he called me last week to invite me to his daughter’s graduation, med school, surgeon, she’s incredible, not a lazy bone in her body, unusual, that one, and that reminds me - Ma’am? Ma’am?! Are you okay?! Ma’am, you’re bleeding! Someone, call 911! No, no, I don’t know, sir, we were just chatting and her eyes rolled back and she started bleeding from her ears and she collapsed, spring allergies, she said, poor woman, I have spring allergies, spring and fall and I’ll tell you what, I suffer, boy oh boy do I suffer, but I’ve never collapsed like that, never.”