This is a short excpert from a story I’ve been writing.

The narrarator is a young girl named Sadie Jenkins. The plot of the story I’m writing doesn’t have a lot to do with this scene. Of course, the sub plot does, so here’s the sub plot: Sadie’s little brother Fred broke a cabinet door, and mom has been hounding dad to fix it. This scene reveals the dad’s tendency to procrastinate and put things off to the last minute. This is still in its rough draft.

“You are such a procrastinator!” my mom huffed.

“Oh come on, that’s just one example,” my dad said crossing his arms, if my procrastination is really that bad, then name another.”

My dad was getting real confident… he shouldn’t have been.

“What about a few weeks ago? You broke the fan, said you’d fix it, and never did. The only reason we have a fan is because I called a guy!” she threw her hands up in the air.

My dad responded with an eye roll… which was obviously a bad decision on his part.

“Okay, how about the lawn? You haven’t mowed it in a month! It looks like garbage out there!”

“Pfft! So what? The grass is a little long. You know, I have a job too!” he shot back. My mother smirked, a smirk I knew. A smirk my brothers knew, as did my sisters. We all knew that smirk. That was the smirk when she had something up her sleeve.

You see, the thing about mom was that she was good at thinking ahead of time. Specifically in arguments. Back in high school, she was the chess champ… makes sense, right?

“One word: duvet.” she circled around dad, as he sat in his recliner chair. Dad’s eyes widened, and he immediately remembered what she was talking about. Even though she didn’t need to, mom reminded him, “We were watching a funny show. The main character spent the entire episode putting on a duvet. Immediately, you remarked saying how easy that is, and how you could do it in a minute. Our quilt was begening to get dirty, and I saw a nice duvet cover at the store. I’ve personally never liked putting on duvet covers, but since you were so confident in yourself, I decided to buy it. You repeatedly said you would do it, and yet you never did. Let me remind you, this was five months ago! Five months! So, do you really think you don’t procrastinate? Really?”

Without a word, dad got off of the recliner and made his way to the garage. A few seconds later, dad came back with some tools. He began to fix the cabinet door, obviously aggravated.

Spoiler: After this mom makes it a big deal that he does the duvet cover too, which he attempts.