The Green Dress

Another piece from the Writer's Toolbox archives. I used the sentence sticks for this one. The bold sentences are the ones I selected and then wrote until the timer ran out.
 
February 16, 2009

He swore on his mother's grave, but then he swore on just about everything. Jon was only six and still thought that "swearing on" something was enough to make it all feasible. Rhonda, his older sister was exasperated by this behavior, "Enough Jon! Just tell mom what the hell you did to her dress!"

"RHONDA!" her mother yelled.

"Of course I would get in trouble now," thought Rhonda, "the little brat uses Mom's favorite dress as a prop in his latest battle fort and I get in trouble..."

"What?!" she yelled back at her mother.

"Stop cursing! You're a Lady!"

Ugh! How did Rhonda not see that one coming? Then the kicker - Mom changes from her reprimanding tone to parental, caretaker as she turned to Jon, "Now, Honey, what happened to my pretty green dress?"

"It was for the tent outside. It was camoflauge. I needed it. Otherwise the bad guys could see me," his sincerity was sickening to Rhonda, but seemed to ease their mother's increasing blood pressure.

Through gritted teeth, still maintaining some of the motherly sing-song required in conversations with a six-year-old, their mother continued, "Jon, why didn't you use the throw cloths I left you in the shed?"

"They weren't green. They were all the same, I decided."

Mom was just about at her breaking point with this one, "You decided?" Rhonda was pleased with her mother's increased aggravation.

"Yeah, the guys found me last time, and since they were all the same they would just find me again unless I got some camoflauge! You wanna see it?" his excitement was palpable. Jon truly did not understand the issue here. His smile was as wide as the time he caught a fly ball in his first tee-ball game. He was simply incorrigible!

They decided to see the fort as a family. It was easy to see where Jon's pride stemmed from - this was a six year old boy's dream. Which also meant, of course, it was his mother's nightmare. The dress was torn into pieces. The arms were fashioned into two separate camoflauged periscopes, one at either end of a hugely extensive tunnel system propped up by lawn chairs, a garbage pail and the beach umbrella. The skirt was torn into two long pieces and then separated from the inset slip to actually create four long panels of green roofing for the stronghold. The bust of the dress was also torn into two pieces, they were the doors taped to the fortress using duct tape.