Rat Trap -5minutefreewrite

For https://steemit.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-688-5-minute-freewrite-sunday-prompt-rat-trap

Rat trap. Shut your rat trap, lest the rats escape your mouth, you putrid stink. Insulting? I haven’t even begun. I search for comedy, but there is none, You stink of cheese, old man, but your stink is that of the cheese you wear as socks, old man.

Oh, I found the comedy.

The young whippersnapper got in Harold’s face. Some comedy alarm rang in his mind. He wanted to holler “elder abuse,” but the comedy alarm told him it would neither be funny nor heeded. He had only a few instants to figure out the correct response, and he couldn’t. So he endured. It was upsetting, probably, to watch, to hear about, to read. He was sorry that he was in any way involved in such a display, but he remembered that children, even adult children, were products of their environments, and susceptible to pressures he couldn’t fathom. He didn’t mean to be all empathetic about the abuse he was suffering, but he couldn’t seem to muster any indignation.

For the third time this week, he just took it. He wondered what had changed about him. It hadn’t been this way when he was the youngsters age. He didn’t just mean that youth respected their elders. That surely wasn’t true, and indeed, there were plenty of elders when he was young and today who didn’t merit respect. But what was different was him. When he was young, he’d stand up for himself in a pinch.

…. There’s so much more.