A Familiar Act

My son loves to threaten me by punishing himself.

It was scorching hot, over 100 degrees, and he deliberately smashed the AC unit. “Unless you immediately transfer fifty thousand dollars to my dad,” he snarled, “I’ll let myself overheat and die right here!”

I was just so tired of this familiar drama.

Quietly, I used that fifty thousand dollars to buy a small apartment, then moved to a cooler resort town overnight.

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The temperature hit a new high today.

News reports said two hundred new cases of heatstroke had been reported, including two severe heatstroke cases.