Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

Why Do Children Fight and Squabble?

Why do children fight and squabble? It's very loud and annoying to those of us who are sitting on the sidelines trying to ignore them - or those of us who are trying to calm them down.

Just the other day I was sitting at my computer browsing FMOF, and two of my little brothers came in and started fighting over the other computer.

The older one (and bigger one, I'll call him "Fred") sat down in the chair in front of the computer. The younger one (and smaller, I'll call him "George") started whining: "You had the computer yesterday, I never get it."

"Don't complain, you had it the day before yesterday." whined back Fred.

"No I didn't."

"Yes you did."

"No I didn't"....

I'd heard all of this before. And I knew for a fact that neither of them had had either yesterday or the day before. The last several days I'd had that particular computer in the shop where I was working on it. So I said, "Both of you, knock it off! If you'll just calm down long enough to remember, I had the computer in the shop the last week! Now both of you stop arguing or neither of you is going to get it"

They both paused for a moment to think. The Fred said "Maybe you had it in the shop but he used your computer while it was down there."

"So did he!" wheedled George, pointing a finger at his brother.

This set me back a moment. Then I burst out "You were using my comptuer?!? You were using MY computer!!??"

They nodded.

"And exactly WHO gave you permission to use my computer?" I demanded.

When neither of them said anything but stared sheepishly at the floor, I knew exactly who had told them that they could use my computer.

I got up and went over to their computer. I put passwords on both of their accounts, and then put a password on my account on my computer. Now nobody gets to use the computer without my permission. Mwuahahaha!

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