no more than you can handle
a sliver of an evolving short story
Well it’s summer, so rules go out the window. Today I’m breaking precedent here to offer you something different - fiction! This is a little sliver of a short story I’m working on, and I thought it would be fun to share it with you. Paid subscribers, you are long overdue for an exclusive post so this one’s for you. You unpaying schleps will have to come up with a Choose Your Own Adventure ending yourselves. (Alternatively: becoming a paid subscriber is very much appreciated and helps keep the wheels on this thing.)
God doesn’t give you more than you can handle. Or at least, that’s what the priest used to say when Jade was a kid. It was the kind of statement that was supposed to sound comforting, but to the discerning mind of a child it was sheer baloney. Everywhere you looked, there were proofs against it: people were given things they couldn’t handle every day. Ms. Gibbons had retired from teaching in the middle of the school year because the fourth grade class was more than she could handle. Rebecca Caldridge’s daddy had hung himself in their coat closet because sobriety was more than he could handle. Jade’s own mother had left because being tied to a child’s every need was more than she could handle.