sell she brings it home My father doesn’t care about stuff He only cares about people My father’s taxi drove around the corner Mona waddled with her short legs down the garden path Too late I said He’s gone A sigh escaped from Mona’s rear end
We were sitting on the couch with flat cushions My mother and I And Mona Mona was snoring on my mother’s lap Do you know about stray bullets I asked Don’t think about that my mother said I could see from the look on her face that she didn’t want to think about stray bullets either But they do exist I said I know my mother answered But the chances of running into one are very very small Maybe Daddy will run into one I said Maybe he’ll walk into a stray bullet That’s possible And then I won’t have a father anymore Anything is possible my mother said Something can always happen The story of the man who was afraid of everything I said That’s a stupid story my mother said In real life it’s much more complicated I’ll try to explain it to you It’s all about something called the odds For instance the odds that you’ll become a millionaire are very very small The odds that you’ll find a coin in the street are a lot bigger You
might not know the exact odds of something happening but you just know there is only a very small chance that you’ll become a millionaire How many millionaires do you know Not a single one I said There you are my mother said That’s the proof And it’s the same thing with fathers How many children with a father do you know A lot I said And how many children who don’t have a father I had to think for a second Do divorced ones count No my mother said Completely without a father Just one I said John’s father died You see The odds of having a father are big my mother said And the odds of not having a father are small So you don’t have to worry too much about not having a father Can you make the odds of something smaller I asked Or bigger Yes my mother said Sometimes The man who was afraid of everything made the odds smaller I said And Daddy is making the odds bigger My mother sighed
I knew she was trying to help me But all this stuff about the odds about chance just made everything a lot more complicated Now I would have to figure out how to make the odds bigger or smaller I thought of John’s father The only dead father I knew I knew three children with a dead cat And two children with a dead dog And one child with a dead mouse I looked at Mona I did not know anyone with a dead dog and a dead father A dead dog and a dead father That almost never happened My mother would say that was against the odds And it would be even more against the odds for someone to have a dead mouse a dead dog and a dead father
