Black Ops

You know how people write in about their cute children who do and say artlessly charming things? Or send entrancing pictures of their kitten or puppy doing something anthropomorphic? You can get a tenner for this, from the right publication. Or you could.  It's probably all about being taken hostage and skinned these days..My BGF and I were once both skint and bored;so we decided to improve the shining hour and our tarnished bank balances, by writing affecting "true life tales" for ready money. One magazine, "Bella" or "Mind Out!"or something like that,had a reader's column called "Your Operation". "Oooh..." we  thought..BGF wrote a thrilling tale of a burst appendix, and I went all-out for drama mixed with pathos in my account of an impassable gallstone and its adventures in my bile duct. Howling with glee,and mentally spending the money, we posted them off.
Nothing.
SO then we tried fictitious toddlers prattling nauseating rubbish like "Do ants go to heaven, and do they stay there?"(the answer to that,by the way is "No,and No").
We confected wise sayings from the most unforgettable character we'd never met. In desperation, and determined to slip something past the editorial panels,we wrote Top Tips of a domestic nature. One began "If you have an excess of flat champagne, and you are blonde, why not rinse your hair with it for extra shine and sparkle?"
Still nothing. We tried "We Love Our Pets",with a tearjerking triumph-over-tragedy story about a squirrel saving the life of a poorly baby shrew. Zilch.
Thoroughly dashed,we were. Years later,we were talking about this to a friend of mine who worked for "The Reader's Digest",but had also served time on a variety of women's magazines. She condensed the "Condensed  Books", and I was livid with envy, until one day we met for lunch and she said "I have just spent ALL morning taking the sex out of a Wilbur Smith".  Anyway, we were telling her how cheesed we had been not to have been sent so much as a book token for all our efforts, and she looked wise. "Oh well" she said "You can pick the fake ones ,written by people like You Two, straight away". "How so?", we enquired, a little hurt. "Because they have proper spelling and grammar. And they always go that little bit too far".
So I had to go and have a real baby, just for material.
My son was unsatisfying as a tot. Low on winsome sayings re birdies, Nana, or innocent enquiries about the sky..although he did invent the term "Snorebreak" to describe those rare moments when he fell asleep in the car and I thought he'd fallen out because it was so quiet. He did once provide me with a highly enjoyable experience in France. His father was driving, on one of those spectacularly endless French motorways; l'Autoroute De Sol . A man of uncertain temper at best, he regarded a long car journey as a grim ordeal to be undertaken all in one rigorous go,with no wussy breaks for natural functions or sustenance, and certainly no light chat or banter. When you have a three-year-old on board, this singlemindedness was likely to be challenged,and so it was on this occasion.
Small but piercing voice from the back "Daddy?"  Silence from furiously hunched concentrating Frenchman.
" Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy DaddyDaddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy DaddyDaddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy........... Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy DaddyDaddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy DaddyDaddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy.....Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy!"
Frenchman crumbles, after much more of the above than I can be bothered to copy and paste, and finally roars.."WHAT?"
Small voice  "You're driving ".
Now that was funny. I shan't send it in to "Your Cupcake", they wouldn't get it, and I couldn't handle the rejection. But "Psychological Warfare Weekly" might be interested.