Free Slights by Kaaron Warren

waddled down the stairs. We all laughed so much we didn't get started for about half an hour, and Peter and I kept cracking up, having to stop the show.
      Mum stopped laughing and didn't start again. We didn't realise till the end how upset she was. I actually didn't realise at all; I was totally excited by my acting.
      I danced around the room, throwing gear off, trying to cover every object in the room with an item of clothing.
      "Stop it, Stevie," Peter said. He had his arms around Mum.
    "Why?"
    "Mum's upset."
      "No, she's not, she loves it, don't you Mum?" and I went to dance in the backyard.

at twenty
    I don't know if I had the shortest career a checkout chick ever had, but I must have come close. Three weeks and two days into it, I knocked a mountain of spaghetti cans flying for the third time. I had already smashed the plate-glass near the information booth when a trolley went out of my control, and when marching proudly out in my uniform I had fallen over and cut my lip, splashing blood all up aisle seven.
      The manager was very controlled. Her assistant hissed at me, "You fucking clumsy idiot fucking loser." But Mrs Gibbs said, "Stephanie, I'm afraid we feel that someone as accident-prone as you is not quite suitable to this kind of work."
      "I don't do it on purpose. You can't discriminate against someone because accidents follow them around. My Dad always calls me accident-inclined," I said. Mrs Gibbs smiled. "I like that. Your Dad must be a lovely man."
      "Oh, yes, he is," I said. He was. When I think about it now, I'm not so sure he was being kindly. Accident-inclined, I'm inclined to do it, I do it on purpose. I'd been saying it for years, proud of it, proof of how much my Dad loved me. But what was he saying? I did it on purpose, to get attention or something? That I'm a victim of Munchausen's? I didn't discuss that with my counsellor. She's got no more room to list the syndromes she's matching to me.
      Mrs Gibbs said, "To be honest, Stephanie, I don't think you are suited for other reasons." I wasn't going to jump in and guess what reasons she had in mind. She went slightly red in the face as the silence continued.
      "Well, for example, there was that woman you accosted."
      I told Mrs Gibbs how ridiculous that was. The bloody woman hit me in the back of the ankles with her trolley to get my attention, then she says, "Young lady, I have been looking for three hours for the tinned asparagus. Is it asking too much that it be placed in a less than hidden position?"
      "I tell you what's asking too much," I told the woman. "You expecting me to believe you've been here three hours, but you've got a wet raincoat on, and it only started raining thirty minutes ago. I know that for a fact. It was sunny before that, that's why we're understaffed, people always stay home on the good days. And I'm guessing, from the look of your cheap shoes, that you're looking for the noname asparagus that we got in from Asia. Because the good stuff, the local stuff, is out for all to see. We don't have the cheap stuff anymore. There were reports of tetanus."
      "I beg your pardon," she said. Her shoulders were pulled back and her neck swayed.
      "Will that be all, Mrs Adder?" I said. I giggled about that one all the way home.
      Mrs Gibbs said, "Unfortunately, she was some sort of something high up in the public service, and she kicked up a bit of a fuss."
      "If she's that high up, why's she such a tight arse? Her arse is so tight she needs a straw to shit through."
      Mrs Gibbs found me funny. She liked the fact I was rude and cheeky; she got too many crawlers. She spluttered. "God, you're awful, Steve," she said. I smiled and shook her hand.
      "It's a fair cop. I'll go quiet," I said. One of those stupid lines you pick up in your life. I had an immediate fantasy; Mrs Gibbs asked me out for lunch, a farewell lunch, and when I got there the whole staff had turned up. Crying because I was