Jane's Parents

Let me tell you a story about Jane.

One day Jane visited her parents to help out around the house. By the time she arrived, her parents were already worked up into their usual apathetically insane frenzy of miscommunication. Her mom had the whole day planned out - in her head, of course - without bothering to share this plan with anyone else. So by the time Jane figured out which direction the days events were headed, her mom was ready to sit down and take a break.

At that point, Jane's dad was consulted on the matter of acquiring keys for the recreational vehicle. He reached into the basket where such items are kept and the whole thing overturned onto the floor. In a frenzy, he started flinging objects back into the basket and without missing a stride, flung a set of keys to Jane who was standing ten feet away. Jane caught them easily but as she turned to pass them on to her mother, she noticed a small knife on the key chain that could have caused her serious bodily harm if she had caught the key chain any another way. Slightly alarmed, she mentioned it to her mother who made an absentminded comment about how her husband is an asshole and then turned and headed out the door to use the keys.

Jane was stunned by the lack of concern and walked back to tell her dad, "You know, you just threw a knife at me. There was a knife on that key chain". To which he responded, "there's no knife on that key chain. (pause) Then, those weren't the right keys". Jane was so dumbfounded by the lack of concern that she didn't know what to do. Her parent didn't think it was a big deal, so maybe it wasn't. She really couldn't think straight about it.

A few hours lately, Jane's dad was fixing the electronic garage door while she was carrying things in and out of the house into the garage. On one of her trips, she stopped to move a bucket near the doorway and her dad said to her, "watch out for the door". She immediately jumped back and watched the door slide down in front of her face. To clarify: her dad's warning sounded more like "you might want to move your car sometime today", than "move your head right now!" as it should have.

Again, Jane was mystified by this lack of concern for her physical well-being. And even as she continued to remark on how he had tried to kill her twice in one day, got little response from either of her parents.

It wasn't until later, when she recalled the incidents to others that the seriousness of the situation became a reality.

Now Jane wonders if her parents are criminally insane or perhaps replacements from a botched alien abduction? Will we ever know for sure?