Finish the Fiction Story Contest - Week #36 - @bananafish
public domain clipart
Spoon-fed Memories
by @calluna
“When I was your age, I was quite the wild one. Ahhh that look, that ‘sure granny’ look, well if you don’t believe me.”
The underpaid nurse attempting to spoon-feed the elderly lady sat, heaped spoon waiting for a pause between words.
“I had quite the adventure, back when I was twenty-two, I never told your mam about this one”
Susie suppressed a sigh, every resident took her as a different relative. They used a warm, familiar tone with her, looking into her eyes, and seeing those of another. She’d given up correcting them, not one of them could remember her name.
“It was during the war, your grandpa worked intelligence out of one of those top-secret northern bunkers, that’s where he got that compass you used to love playing with.”
There was something about never been seen as herself that was starting to eat at Susie. At first, she’d pitied them, unable to see things for what they were, but as time went by, every word spoken to her, meant for another, began to cut.
“It’s been two months since I'd had a letter from him, and well, you can imagine what I thought when a man in uniform knocked at the door.”
Finally catching a pause in the residents flow, Susie swooped in with a spoon full of buttery mash, beaded with peas. For loud, sloppy moments the lady chewed, and trying to draw on her compassion, Susie smiled, scooping up another spoonful.
“Well my heart dropped and I nearly fainted before he could speak. That awkward young officer grabbed my hands, looking me firm in the eyes, ‘He’s not dead Mrs Ellerton, he’s fine, I just need you to come with me’. I’ve never packed a bag so fast in my life!”
Susie quickly exploited the dramatic moment, dropped another spoon of mash, this time laked with stewed beef and gravy, into the open mouth. She used to hate herself for finding those too far gone to chatter away easier, avoiding the talkers, but despite her best evasions, she’d got stuck with conversational Mrs Ellerton today.
“We sped down those country roads, whizzing up north, in hours. He told me nothing on the way, offering only that Nick would tell me when we got there. I’d had no idea what to bring, and had frantically thrown everything I could think of into my bag, as we drove up I began to realise all the things I’d not thought of, but there was no turning back, I could tell by the way that officer gripped the wheel we were in a hurry!”
Mrs Ellerton wasn’t letting up, Susie glanced at the clock, her shift was due to finish in ten minutes, but she couldn’t go anywhere until the old bag wrapped it up. Putting the spoon down, she tried to fight the rising anger, and decided to try and get Mrs Ellerton to cut to the chase.
“So why had your husband had you brought there?”
My finish to the story:
“Well you’re not going to believe this, child, but he wanted me to do an undercover mission with him!” Mrs. Ellerton revealed, eyes glittering with excitement.
Susie rolled her eyes at the ceiling and slowly expelled her breath. There was no help for it now, the senile old bag was going to keep right on talking.
“As soon as we arrived, Tom took me right to Nick’s quarters. Nick was pacing back and forth and, my, didn’t he look handsome raking his fingers through that thick black hair,” Mrs. Ellerton continued, for the moment looking dreamily off into space.
Susie thought to herself, “yeah, yeah, he looked good, so get on with this so called story”.
“Daniel grabbed me in a bear hug. We were so happy to see each other! Then I asked him what the devil was going on. He explained that they had received intelligence that a vital map was being smuggled into General Heimmel’s grand ball that very evening and it was to be carried in by General Heimmel’s wife, Bretta. Heimmel’s wife was an undercover agent for our side and the plan had been set for our operative, Veronica. Bretta didn’t know Veronica, only the code phrase to be used and that Veronica would be wearing a yellow dress.”
Susie yawned and wondered if the old lady was on some new meds causing her to be hallucinating this crap. “So what did all that have to do with you?”
“Well Veronica arrived at the base the night before, yellow dress ready, but shortly after arriving became violently ill. They were beside themselves, for women were in short supply in the area. Nick studied the dress and realized it would be a fit for me and convinced his handlers that I would be the perfect solution.
Susie sniffed loudly and her disbelief was obvious to Mrs. Ellerton.
“I’ll have you know my first assignment as a “secret agent” went off beautifully. I obtained the map from Bretta and she never knew that I wasn’t the original Veronica. And when I admired her diamond broach while we were transacting our business, she gave it me, saying that it was from her husband and she loathed it.
That’s why I have told you this story. That diamond broach has always been very special to me. I know I'm nearing the end, and I'm giving it to you, dear granddaughter. There’s a small red box in that top drawer, hidden inside that box of playing cards.”
Susie’s eyes lit. Could it be true? She opened the drawer and extracted the cards. Sure enough, inside was a small red box nestled among wads of stuffing. Susie opened the packet and gazed upon the twinkling diamond broach.
She abandoned the supper tray and threw her arms around Mrs. Ellerton’s neck. “Oh thank you so much, grandma! Now I really have to run, I’m going to be late for school.”
On her way out, she stopped by the administrator’s office, and called out “Sorry, but I’m quitting today.” And she sauntered out the front door, never to return.
This post has been rated by the user-run curation platform CI! In this platform users are able to manually curate content. This is done regardless of Steem Power, for both rewards and vote size calculation.
Join in at our site here!
https://collectiveintelligence.red/
Or join us on discord to interact with the community!
https://discord.gg/sx6dYxt
This post was submitted for curation by: @theironfelix
This post was given a rating of: 0.9828977164561081
This post was voted: 100%
Ah such a shame one can say of the taking of the heirloom, but what lies underneath here is not a condemnation of that act. Id est, a sorrowful and shameful downward tilt of the head or the guilty look that asks the reader to not condemn the nurse. For the act was committed by someone who has no other means to subsistence and, better more, stuck in a dead-end that forced her to give up her labour-power to earn meager compensation to tend to the elderly.
However cleverly, the wages are low due to the fact that labour-power spent here isn't productive. Id est, it doesn't create commodities; one cannot rehabilitate and reform the elderly, just give them happy moments before their eternal slumber. And most of the nursing homes industries are based upon Revenue, and rarely on Capital, which further shoves wages to be artificially low.
Which, after so many paychecks, forces her to commit acts of Illegalism to stay afloat. And one must not shame the prole stuck in what is essentially a service economy that'll commit theft; just as one wasn't surprised that proles in industrial economies would steal bread to not perish.
Which now leads to the story showing an exemplum of not only petty theft in modern conditions and how people pay attention to monetary items. But equally also a condemnation of the conditions that, although found itself existing on accident, necessitated her actions to come to fruition if she were to be service of her economy. Thus she allows one of the minor cogs to spin for now as she has yet a way to escape or change the whole machinery of society. And I would avoid saying cynicism here, realism is definitely present here. As cynicism is just rounds of unending pessimism towards change and never-ending rounds of optimism towards the machinery of society living out a long life.
Hmm... But stealing bread in order to survive starvation is something other than stealing because you don't want to adhere to a basic principle of human coexistence even though you could. Susie is representative of those who regard themselves as victims and therefore receive legitimation before themselves, even though they could have chosen a different path at any time. Although I do not condemn Susie, but only her act, she has my empathy as a human being, but my clear rejection of the theft.
I agree with you that there is something wrong with the framework conditions and that we people in modern societies often treat small children and old people as objects for safekeeping and thus violate intergenerational contracts - in some cases unintentionally but nevertheless. Since, realistically speaking, we cannot change the system, but have to develop with it, it would be good if everyone who looks for a job made the best of it, because in this way there are more winners than losers. We cannot blame the circumstances for our own misconduct.
I think that @theironfelix didn't consider the possibility of someone actually contradicting his raging river of arguments.. go proud Erika!
This is not a contradiction. This is merely a statement that so happens to disagree with me. And that can only happened to be produced if such a statement was something they couldn’t agree to. And I so happen to disagree with @erh.germany here, thus it shouldn’t be a surprise that I have written a comment that disagrees with @erh.germany. To pit us as some grand fighters in a boxing ring is to do more harm to both of our disagreements than it is to even to do justice to @erh.germany.
On contradictions, this easily could be said to be one. But I favor the word “disagreement” more since the problem had been identified, our perceptions towards it does not line up. If it were a serious contradiction, then neither of us would dare to comment to each other and instead write pieces that expresses our disgusts towards each other as we write why the other’s position is alien to our own.
Regardless, this chain of comments was bound to happen due to our own biases, due to the prompt and ending and due to the nature of wanting to protect one’s ideology no matter where one talks.
Anyways I find ir cutesy @bananafish that you mystify me there. To suggest that I do more than simply read something, think for a second, spurgle out my biases which the author may or may not like and get back to my work.
Anyways, if this was an actual debate, we would’ve not done it here. Steemit is no good fertile grounds for debates. We probably done it front of each other were we can be both awkward, gazing at each other and having to say what we have to say. Because here with comments and how the Internet has been, we’ve been nurtured to think that since we’re granted unlimited time to think our responses that we can and must obsess over nitpicking and “pwning” them. And while an individual may be at fault for reproducing it, do they really have alternate avenues or just pretenses of such? Such is ecosystem of the Net.
Somewhere I said I "agree with you", didn't I? ;-)
Keep in mind I am tipsy here. Regardless, that’s why I said to the Great @bananafish that we only disagree and not contradict each other. We generally disagree and we should recognize that. Regardless there are points with you that I agree with but we shouldn’t refrain from acknowledging our differences.
But even so, let’s both scream together that we should tolerate each other! Not because we shall accept our differences. No! Because we shall tolerate each other by denying our differences should make any impact on how we treat each other. More-so, that since we are not threats to each other at all, that we should think our differences came of chance and nurtured by conditions that spawned such. Yet never a reason to be intolerant of each other. (Which intolerance would compel us to accept our differences should affect our treatment towards each other.)
Good point. I acknowledge our differences, but I think debating them here would lead too far. I chat in Discord from time to time. If you want, we can talk there. :) So long stay warmly greeted.
Oh I didn't mistify anyone! I was just joking with you bud. I would make a distinction between a behaviour born out of mere greed and one dictated by poor conditions, tho. It's not by stealing from a person who cannot defend herself that you fight against social unequality (which by the way may hit with the same intensity both the granny and the nurse). So I'm closer to @erh.germany position.
Nowhere, Great @bananafish, did I state explicitly or implicitly that Illegalism against the proles and defenceless -> radical action to challenge Capitalism. Even if one were to cite such directly, the over all attitude is to not be suprised that this action was taken. More-so, her actions are nurtured by the system since it comes to help the system propagate itself. That reading of my comment is more sustainable than saying I support Illegalism 100%. Or to make clear a thing which may be obfuscated: her actions, though morally condemnable, are still propagated by Capitalism because it comes to the benefit of Capitalism. Which I might add is an argument in just not being suprised by the action. Already the discussion was to fail. Which I might add again, we still view the same problem but we have different reactions to it and different ways to resolve it.
lol :-)
😜
If only that were the case that people can fully be pinpointed for their actions. That is to say that humans had full control of their destiny when they clearly haven’t. And if thou speaks of that one Socrates quote, I have done my digging and found it in a book that mentions a character named “Socrates” but not the “Socrates” of the Heroic Age of Greece.
Regardless, people do have an ability to outright overthrow the system if they band together. Thou hast to remember that the revolutions are the cry of the people who wish to no longer be oppressed. Yet, wherever a revolution spawns, it must not only search to increase the freedom of the people but also maintain those freedoms by securing the material conditions that can continue to propagate those conditions.
Yet ah, thou may step back and say what of Susie’s World. And I would say, she lives in a NeoLiberal World that has broken and torn asunder the notion of Human Coexistence way before she was born. So already she cannot know what coexisting means, only from the footnotes of history can she dare to muse it. But ah, the footnotes; why are they merely footnotes? Is it because NeoLiberalism had done better than Human Coexistence, well no. It’s because it’s afraid of people organizing around interests of the people for the people. NeoLiberalism can’t stand others realizing and abandoning the false dichotomy of individualism and collectivism; for if people done that, they can see that the system propagates their class for the benefit of those that rule and they are only given the minimal amount to reproduce their labor-power for another day. The only thing the people have to realize that the only thing they have to lose is their chains and they have everything to gain.
For, as to quote the Greeks, “a society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” And I must remind thou that there are many people around the World that yearn to Coexist as Humans and not with someone that forces people to be subordinates. And those very same people long tried to appease and ask for more scraps, only to rarely get those granted to them. And realistically, most of the time, they get brutally beaten for suggesting it. So don’t dare to say that they must continue to beg when they decide instead to go to the people and show them the history of the system and say a better World is possible. For these people have already declared “this is a life not worth living and I shall fight, even if it hurt me immensely, to take control over my destiny with others that have been also robbed of their destinies. And why to do so: that the future generations will never have to feel alienated, estranged and can fully experience having control with their own destinies.”
And we can bicker of moral rights and wrongs, but remember that a revolution is only the self-defence of the people and can never be more than that. And remember this also: the building of the New Social Order will always be on top of the Old Social Order. As even our current Social Order had to come into existence somehow, and we know it didn’t make an excuse for itself. Because if it did it, then that would be an admission of guilt. And to further this, know this: only humans can change their own conditions, but the conditions had to be revealed to them by the conditions in order for that change to happen.
The day we can act in accordance with Kant’s categorical imperatives is the day when Humans have control over their own destiny. More-so, that they can truly coexist without a breath of hatred for one another. A day when thy dreams can be realized and lived, and that’s equally the dreams of the revolutionaries fighting for a new World.
One can feel imprisoned between the free and feel completely free between all the prisoners.
Susie is one who lives in a modern world (like us now more or less). She doesn't seem to feel free and is only interested in herself, represented by her selfish behaviour at the old lady's bed (disinterest, impatience). She didn't need to steal anything because she wouldn't have starved to death. The context of this story makes this clear.
Another nurse (as I cast "Natalie" in my own sequel) is so free to react to the situation and Mrs. Ellerton in a completely different way. The class struggle and the revolution should not take place at the senior's bed. I believe that political thinking and action can be found precisely in such scenes. You see a Susie as a victim. But who wouldn't you want to sacrifice in this scene if you told the story differently? What would you do to let everyone win in this specific situation?
I don't think we disagree. I think you and I have the heart in the right place. ;-)
I think I have done bad to even misread thy reply @erh.germany. For methinks at first thou was talking of humanity fighting for a future but thou was sincerly talking about illegalism. So lemme take the courage to fix this error in both of our readings.
So lemme reconstitute my argument clearly:
- Within our World and the World of the Story, we find parallels to class struggles and class interests.
- Though the action is morally condemnable by assumed human coexistence. It is more condemnable that Susie is hurting the class interest of Mrs Ellerton because the boach could’ve helped the grand daughter.
- However Capitalism had forced her to compete within her class to survive.
C1. Her theft and stealing of the possession was necesitated for her to live another day.C2. We, as observers from far away, shouldn’t be surprised of the act though we can have our passions stirred by it.
C3. This action in no way implies radical emancipation of the Working Class, nor has my argument stated she’s a revolutionary. It is possible she could become one, but she is not one now and her consciousness is still plagued by individual survival in a system that benefits with her committing these actions. Or to say, she follows symptomatic behaviours and she has yet to realize such.
And for such I do apologize for not realizing and helping steer the argument back on course. Yet before we go and discuss things, we should make clear what we do say. Or forever we shall be blind that we never thought ourselves one-and-in-the-same and bickering about two different things when we both were talking of the same thing originally.
Great finish off the story, like the idea of ex-agent, you never know who we have in our surroundings people may look simple and not important but being polite and caring sometimes rewards like in the case of Susie. Like the way you describe the characters, easy to follow your idea and like the development of events.
Great job Blueeyes8960, I really liked the flow of your part of the story
Realism has crept into the story. How often this must happen, to people who are not competent. That was an interesting twist...creative.
Susie is really horrid, isn't she?
You are right, how often this type of thing must happen. I have a dear friend currently in a nursing home facility that I visit often. I know for most part these facilities try to provide good care with good employees, but the situation of low paying jobs and people unable to fend for themselves make the environment viable for abuse.
oh my, this is such a good ending! The story she tells is brilliant, the details, the yellow dress, raking his hands through his hair, all seems so appropriate for the recounted story. As soon as she mentioned giving the broach, i wondered if Susie would make off with it, a very realistic telling of the lengths some of the underpaid, overworked nursing staff end up going to. my own grandma lost a fair few things that way. Although, equally, maybe if her granddaughter had visited to hear the tale, she would have ended up with the heirloom herself. you have taken a story with plenty of super natural possibility, and told the truest horror of all, a fantastic finish!
I'm glad you enjoyed the story. And that is also a good point you made, if the real granddaughter had visited, she might have received the broach. In a continuation of the story, I might see the actual granddaughter visiting the next day, only to arrive minutes after Mrs. Ellerton passed away (she did say she knew her end was near). And then the broach causing Susie so much bad luck and remorse that she actually tracked down the granddaughter and returned it to her. Maybe a little redemption in the end. :)
I agree with @calluna. I would add that poor working conditions should never justify to take advantage of an incompetent. Your ending is raw and opens reflections on human alienation and abuses over the weakest.. from a style point of view, the story is written with attention to details and smooth. Welcome again to the contest, keep it up!
Haha!!! Little old ladies better be more mindful about what they tell their nurses.
Congratulations @blueeyes8960! You have completed the following achievement on the Steem blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Click here to view your Board of Honor
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPTo support your work, I also upvoted your post!
Do not miss the last post from @steemitboard:
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by blueeyes8960 from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows. Please find us at the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you would like to delegate to the Minnow Support Project you can do so by clicking on the following links: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP.
Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.
Hi blueeyes8960,
Visit curiesteem.com or join the Curie Discord community to learn more.
Well deserved! This was one of the best stories in this edition!
Thank you very much for the curation and upvotes!
Posted using Partiko Android