Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

You Can't Force Me To...

"Son, your room is a pig sty. You need to go clean it up!"

I was right in the middle of the last chapter of The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie. "Dad, I've got to find out whodunnit first!"

"Read the book later. Now it's time to clean your room."

I don't know what came over me, I really don't. Maybe it's just the fact that I was now taller than him, and outweighed him by quite a bit. I looked him square in the eye and said, "You can't force me to."

"I beg your pardon?" he said, very quietly.

I should have recognized the quietness of his reply as a sign of a tightly controlled anger. "I said, 'You can't force me.'"

"Son," he said, "how much do you weigh?"

"185 pounds," I replied.

Dad pulled out his slide rule and, after a brief calculation, said, "About 84 kilograms." Then he gave me a boot to the seat of my pants that sent me accelerating toward my room.

The last thing I heard was Dad muttering, "Mass...times...acceleration..."

I guess he can force me after all.

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