The little girl came rushing in the house after the school bus dropped her off. She was wearing her little pink back pack with the unicorn decorations on it. She was excited and wanted her mother's attention immediately as all little children did. To a small child their needs and wants are the most important things to them. Everything and everyone else could wait.
Size: 8 KB (1,693 words)
Genre: Fiction
Sex Contents: No Sex
Tags: Tear Jerker
Review by Mazeppa [other reviews by Mazeppa]
Reviewed:
This story seemed conspicuous for two things. It was short, and it had a score of above 9, which when most stories are mired in the 6-point-somethings these days, seemed pretty amazing. I had to check it out to find out why. By about half way through it was pretty obvious, as the emotional and politically correct 'twist' loomed inevitable.
In the face of this, the actual quality of the writing - in a word, 'okay' - is of secondary importance to readers who voted this up, it seems. The sentence structure and grammar is uninventive and not always clear. What's with the placement of the dash here?:
The mother started fixing a — peanut butter and jelly sandwich for her.
Throughout we have confused use of " and ' which grates on the eye:
Mom heard all about "the best friend" Suzie, the "mean boy"
But the writer (correctly) uses " for dialogue too. If you're going to use " for dialogue, then you need to use ' for other types of quote.
Again...
he knew that these "crushes" were just beginning because her daughter was a little goddess with her blond hair and blue eyes [also here we could use a comma after because].
This may seem pedantic of me, but it all points to fact that the writing is nothing better than 'okay', so in fairness we should have a score here of no more than 7, yes? It IS important, and sticks in my craw I have to be honest. Basically, this story gets a 9+ vote because of its war hero message - which is highly dubious, even if the pro-war and (probably) gun lobby seem to be out in force. I hate to turn this into a political statement (well, actually, no I don't - since implicitly this is what the writer and his voters have done already), but if the Daddy hadn't gone to a highly contentious war, he wouldn't have died.
"When Mom and I went to Washington and met the president, he told me my Dad was a hero and gave me a medal."
Yes, well he WOULD say that wouldn't he, since Daddy like all the other militarist zombies has gone off to safeguard the Capitalist oil wealth and fight for the big lie.
Sad that a child loses her father in these circumstances (hence I give the appeal a 2 rather than 1), but frankly appalling and unjust that this miniature effort is so highly voted when a far more creatively-written and morally sound story exists on SOL about a Down Syndrome baby and gets no more than a '6'. Not as 'cool' as a piece about the 'sacrifice' of a war hero, I guess.
Enjoy this little bout of sentimental propaganda by all means, but just remember what he has sacrificed his life and his daughter's right to have a Daddy for: American imperialistic hypocrisy and falsehood. It's fucking Vietnam all over again, do they never learn??
