Becoming

"Look," said Mr. Chester, twisting his mustache in one hand and waving a cigarette wildly in the other. "The world might end tomorrow, and all you want to do is go bicycling?! I simply cannot abide such foolishness!" He pranced about in front of his eight-year-old daughter, heaving his broad belly as he moved, the monocle under his left eye flashing in the late afternoon light.

"But Father," squeaked the little girl, "no one knows when the world will end, you said so yourself." Her large brown eyes were full of mirth as she watched her father redden. He walked away from the love seat where she sat with a sour look on his face. So tempted was Ophelia to laugh that she stuck her head quickly down into the lap of her brilliant floral sundress.

"I may have said that once," her father huffed, leaning now against the grand piano in their Victorian parlor. "But that must have been quite some time ago, and must not have taken my recent discoveries into account! A man cannot be held accountable for words spoken in ignorance! You must understand Ophelia, I've done a considerable amount of calculating, and the chances that the world will end tomorrow are just shy of seventy-percent! Do you have any idea what this means?" At this, he gathered himself up to his full height for effect. He took a long drag from his cigarette and exhaled the smoke impressively from his nose.

Ophelia smiled broadly and looked out the enormous parlor window over her father's shoulder. "Father," she said, looking him in the eye once more. She took a very careful tone here, "If the world were to end tomorrow, I think that the best thing I could do, and simply must do at this very moment, is ride my bicycle."

Mr. Chester raised his eyebrows.

"Father, wait, let me explain. If it all ends tomorrow, then perhaps it's best if I live the equivalent of the next sixty years of my life in the next twenty-four hours. And if that's so, then I believe that I shall need to ride my bicycle at full tilt for the next six hours straight, if not longer! Because Father, can you imagine what we might become if the world were to end and we had left certain portions of our lives un-lived? We would end on a bad note, like an unfinished book or play. And really, who wants that?"

The sun was at the climax of its setting, streaming through the clear panes of the parlor window and bathing Ophelia and her father in warm light. Mr. Chester, his eyebrows still raised, came and sat beside his daughter on the love seat and joined her in looking out the window.

"Ophelia, my girl," he finally said, looking over at her with surprise still manifest on his face. "You really are the brightest eight-year-old that I know. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps everything will be fine. But, perhaps not. Anyhow, why don't you go ride your bicycle for, oh, say, thirty minutes? I believe your mother will want us both in for dinner, and I have quite a bit of smoking to do if I plan to live the next thirty years of my life in the next twenty-four hours. Off you go!"

The End.

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This post is part of a "synchroblog," wherein a number of persons blog bi-weekly on the same topic and release their posts at the same time. The topic for this time was 'what we might become if...'. To access the other blogs (which are well worth reading), follow this link:

Synchrobloggers