Choose free time -5minutefreewrite (x3)
"I thought we were partners! You were the first who wanted this project. And now…”
Genevieve trailed off. She hadn’t the time to find a new partner. Howard had been a bad egg. He had too many debts, too much to distract him. Better to cut him free.
And so she did, and she watched him tumble down the slide.
The playground was a cruel place. Everyone was bound to get into trouble some time. She just didn’t want it to be because she was carrying too much ballast.
Genevieve followed him down the slide, with poise, though. She felt the ground meet her feet and popped up, walking without losing an iota of momentum.
Inside the school, she walked proudly into Mrs. Cookie’s office. There, Mrs. Cookie ate a cookie and a sandwich at her desk.
“Mrs. Cookie. I have decided that our project, ‘Man’s inhumanity to Man’ shall no longer be our project, but my project. Howard isn’t up to snuff. Better to soldier on alone than to have to carry him forward as well.”
Mrs. Cookie … She is a very determined woman, but this is a men's world.
She understood the problems facing Genevieve. Howard was, indeed, something of a palooka. But she also knew that in a man’s world, a woman needed to learn to play nice with palooka’s.
“I understand,” Mrs. Cookie said, looking over the top of her chunky chocolate chunk peanut butter cookie. “But you don’t. The assignment isn’t, ‘Who can write the best paper’ The assignment is, ‘who can write the best paper with a partner’ - there are human social skills you must learn from this activity. If you’ve given yourself a leg down by accepting a dud for a partner, well, then you’ll have to give yourself a leg up by developing leadership skills that can give him the tools for success. This is the world we live in, Genevieve, and there’s no way around it.”
Genevieve spluttered and hummed and hawed. This day had begun awful and gotten worse. She’d been looking forward to a nice evening of philately, but this meant more work on top of the work she’d been procrastinating.
“You can't have it all. Sure, you can have a big house and a family and a fulfilling career, and loving relationship. But you can’t have all that and some time to read a book or watch Netflix, or heck, play a video game. The world we live in, Genevieve is one of productivity OR relaxation. There is no balance. Either you work until you die or you zone out until you die. I know which I would choose if I had it all to do over again, but you’re young. You can still make the sane choice. Which is laziness. Or rather, freedom. Choose freedom. Let making the world a better place frustrate someone else. Just complain. Please. Take it from a TEACHER. Of all things, a teacher. What was I thinking? I don’t even have half of it all. All I have is the work.”
And with that, Mrs. Cookie stuffed the entire cookie in her mouth, pushed it down with the sandwich, and then, and only then, did she begin letting water dribble from her bottle into her open wheat-filled maw.
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