I shouldn't be so timid

This little fellow was twelve when he accidentally killed the sheriff in the 1930's.

The senior center doesn't discriminate by age. I like to think that's why I'm allowed to attend the writing group. Although I have received senior discounts in restaurants without asking so I might look older than I think.

This week, I wrote a very short story, less than 500 words. A western again.

It begins with two boys in the sheriff's office. They're there to report a crime. The sheriff doesn't believe them. He tells them the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf.

“There was a town,” the sheriff said, “and they had a flock of sheep. And they gave a boy the job of guarding the sheep. He got bored watching them, so he yelled, Wolf! Wolf! And the people in town grabbed their guns and came running. But when they got there, there was no wolf and the boy was laughing at them like it was all a big joke. So they shot him.”

"We ain't laughin'," the kid says. "We're tellin' the truth."

The story doesn't go into detail, but the two children murder the sheriff and deputies try to beat confessions out of them. The violence was all off-screen so to speak, but it bothered me that it involved children so I decided not to read it to the group. When in doubt, do nothing has long been my motto. It has saved me a lot of embarrassment over the years.

I have to go to the group even if I have nothing to read because I have to take my mother there. So I sat at the big table listening to the others.

One guy, about ninety, read a story he wrote based on Norse mythology. It began with Odin carrying two elf girls into the bushes and raping them.

Another guy (one of my old teachers from junior high) who keeps writing Jewish stuff read something based on the story of Lilith, Adam's first wife who now flies around the world killing babies for some reason.

Old people aren't as sensitive as I thought.

I should note here that the ex-teacher said he had told the story to an audience at some event. He prefaced it by explaining that it was rather sexist---Lilith was Adam's BAD wife who  refused to serve him before she started killing babies---but he was surprised that women in the audience found the story offensive.

That's what worries me about what I write. Other people may not find ironic sexism and backward, violent people as amusing as I do.