Are you a parent going through the Terrible Twos? Did you live through them and survive? Terrible Twosdays is a place to commiserate over the unending shenanigans of your Darling Children (as the online parenting communities say). Nonfiction stories will be considered, so long as names have been changed to protect the guilty. Inspired by our best-selling gift book for parents, Go the Fuck to Sleep, Terrible Twosdays joins the roster of our other online short fiction series. Unlike Mondays Are Murder and Thursdaze, we’re looking for stories with a light and mischievous feel, all about the day-to-day challenges of parenting. As with our other flash fiction series, stories must not exceed 750 words.
We pulled into our parking space at 9:38am. Yes, we were technically eight minutes late. But I’d managed to dress and feed four hungry tiny people, wrestle them into car seats, and drive here. Eight minutes late was a win.
There’s a girl in my nine year old’s third grade class who apparently has been left back more than a couple of times. She’s twelve and sprouting . . .
Potty training. So . . .
On the last day of November, Chip spent his hour commute composing a suicide letter in his head, absently passing pokey sedans, picturing his boss’s face when the dickhead heard about the tragedy . . .
While walking to the playground one afternoon, JR practiced his road safety by stopping at every stop sign he saw. He would chime, “Red says stop,” while he looked left, then right, and a second continue, “Green means go.” And so JR went through the neighborhood obeying the stop signs and exploring each drain . . .
If Rudolf Dreikurs had not died in 1972, I might be in prison today . . .
There is a boy with dark brown hair . . .
And so my nine-year-old discovered the word the other day. On the subway: a young woman, thoroughly exasperated by her fellow rude subway riders . . .