Crossing a line

Oh, I'm sure even the most straight-laced, honest person among us has done it at least once. You get up, and just feel so mentally fatigued that you simply cannot face the day, and call your employer with that story about the 24-hr flu.

But when the need for a day off goes this far, well, all I can say is, they pretty much deserve what they get. I mean, who in their right minds thinks it's a good idea to get unlimited sick days from work by telling your employer your 17 year old son is terminally ill? And to escalate it to the point where you tell people he has died?

If that wasn't bad enough, when their employer caught the whiff of eau du halibut in the air, and asked the couple to verify their absences, they went as far as to have an obituary published to show as their proof.

Their scheme unraveled when people who knew the family saw the boy in a restaurant, obviously not dead, and apparently not suffering any of the ill effects one would expect from a terminal illness. Being sensible people, rather than getting on their knees to proclaim the miracle of resurrection, they opted to alert the authorities.

Can you imagine the dinner table conversation when the boy realized his parents killed him off to escape work? Talk about teenage angst. I hope they at least had insurance to pay for his therapy bill.

One would think the couple simply didn't think things through. Seems obvious to me that if the major component of your plot is to be minus a son, then the sensible thing to do is to send him to boarding school. Or possibly realize the whole thing just doesn't fall under the K.I.S.S. principle, and come up with a different plan.