William was bawling. Tears poured down his cheeks as he wailed and pointed at the Cookie Monster cookie jar on the counter. Negotiations had broken down.

“William, stop. William, no, we can’t do this right now. Daddy has to go to work.”

Trevor was already ten minutes late. The boardroom would be filling up with people waiting to hear his quarterly report. It wasn’t much of an excuse to tell them that his son rested the fate of the world on eating a cookie for breakfast.

“You know what the real reason is?” he imagined telling them. “Sarah bought a cookie jar that looks like Cookie Monster and then filled it with cookies. Where are the broccoli jars made of Broccoli Man the broccoli monster?” But he wouldn’t say that.

William hadn’t let up. He was torrential and losing vowels rapidly. He had settled on consecutive As but every few dozen he found space for, ‘Aaaaaaaaaaa-pleeeeeeeease-aaaaaaaaaaa.’

Trevor handed his son to his wife and left the house. He slammed the car door and reversed into the road without checking for traffic. He floored the pedal didn’t even stop at the intersection before turning right.

He sped down the road hitting lucky green lights along the way. He kept glancing at the dashboard clock, calculating how late he may end up being: amazingly he had made up five whole minutes.

But then a red. He stopped abruptly, his bumper sticking out over the line. He hit the steering wheel and cursed. It’s okay, he thought, he had to turn left anyway. He watched the red light and urged it on, asking it to change. It held on a little longer, just to punish him, but then it switched to yellow and green. He barely registered the green at all and sped out to turn left, to beat the oncoming traffic.

Thwak. His back end swung away in the other direction. His head went sideways and put a crack in the window. The world spun around him like he was suddenly on a Merry Go Round. He clenched his body and reached for something to hold on to.

The doctors said there wasn’t much they could do for him. They bandaged his head and wrapped his wrist. They said he sprained it but he couldn’t figure out how. They said there was no need to keep him in the hospital overnight and that he should go home and rest.

Sarah came to pick him up, William in tow. The boy looked concerned and poked at his father’s bandage. ‘Boo boo?’

“Yeah, Daddy got a boo boo.”

At home, William rushed to the television and to continue his morning cartoons. Trevor pickedup the Cookie Monster jar and brought it into the living room. He sat down next to his son and opened the jar.  Trevor said, “Do you want a cookie?”

William nodded.

“Good, cause we’re going to eat ‘em all.”