Father

Jenny always called things stupid. Early on, her friends knew about those stupid meat-head showoffs in gym class, and her mom heard how Sara Weiland was so stupid when she stole her boyfriend at summer camp. Later, the internet was stupid. Nutra-sweet gives you cancer, and was stupid. Long distance was stupid. The book report she spent the whole weekend on turned out to be stupid. And last week, her straight thin hair was stupid and such a pain. After a while, people that knew her got used to it. She wasn’t impressive enough for the habit to wear off on anybody. It just sort of faded from an irritation to something that didn’t exactly register—lumped together with the Jenny people knew. The only person or thing that never earned the pronouncement of stupid, was her dad. The mystery surrounding him withheld her judgment. Also, there hung this certain trepidation at the thought of lumping him in with the rest of the world. But that one morning walking over to his house, watching him read his retarded paper: he glanced up and completely missed the mess of a little girl standing in front of him. An eternity passed. Then he just looked back down at the story about the beet farms closing up in Moorhead. I hate you, she squeaked, and walked straight for the bathroom.