Phone Conversation With My Mother

Cast of characters:

Richie – stepfather

Jasper - dog

Narrator – mother

 “Richie opened a can of water chestnuts 18 months past their used by date and fed some to Jasper and put the rest in his fried rice and when I told him later that you could get botchalism from eating spoiled canned goods and said ‘oh it’ll probably be alright as long as the can wasn’t bulging’ he said ‘the can was bulging’. And so then I said ‘well botchalism has about an 80 to 90 percent fatality rate’ and he got quite upset – not about himself but about Jasper, he was saying ‘Oh if Jasper dies of botchalism I’d have to die too – and I’d want to be buried in the same coffin with him, in the same grave.’”