The lid of the teapot rattled as though terrified. Dad is not the table-banger. No one in the house is. It’s a house of quiet, impatient table-tappers at worst, so Mom’s resilience is just as startling. Like a second startle, the bang and rattle followed by a pedal tone of ominous import previously unnoticed. She would sit back, hands in lap looking, a rock to dad’s crashing waves. “Fuck the teapot, it’s time” the looking would seemed to say.

One did not “have” to get a real job. Venetians would understand the scarcity of resources and the rationale, no, the beauty of a loyalty to one’s parents. They would feel honored to live in the ancestral home. To fight, stiletto bared, for the honor of one’s history - could there be some thing more noble? But this now was some western pastoral anxiety. One must leave the farm for one own land else risk familial competition - rattling of teapots.

One would not be a challenge to father’s janitorial supply sales empire. Expertise in Shoegaze and it’s influence on the fashions and music of 90s alternative does not impinge upon applications of hydrochloric soaps in commercial agriculture. One could argue that it enhances such ventures, though the extent of enhancement has yet to be examined fully. No need to unsheathe one’s stiletto, capulet-style, toward one’s erstwhile benefactor.

This is not the rhetorical strategy mom and dad would take. One is a “big, smart guy” with “potential” to be realized through one’s association with aforementioned commercial agriculture. Operating a bulldozer is an excellent entry to the ground level of a “good company” gracious enough to explore one’s potential provisionally, and without scrutiny of one’s potential bulldozer operating license.

One would, hard hat donned, apply counter-directionally levers cleansed with hydrochloric acid soap then rinsed before scoring began, twisting the bulldozer, tank-style, toward the hillocks of fragrant agriculture, then shift unidirectionally driving the erstwhile plant matter toward loading docks staffed by intrepid CDL holders, brimming with potential, nodding stoically, the roar all around of engine noise feeding back the growth of ancestral agriculture.