Mom had a hunch. One day, she played some of the kids I hung around with, getting them to cough up hints about my possible arcade shenanigans. she called the arcade and sweet-talked the couple into giving me up. They never suspected her ulterior motives; Mom had a way with people. She not only read them like a book, but could adjust her demeanor with the ease of a professional actor to get what she wanted. The Fun Center debacle mathed out as follows: Five visits to the smoke-filled, drug-riddled video game shithole, multiplied by the three lies I allegedly told – denying my having ever been there – which brought the grand total to fifteen leather belts across the ass.
an old Boy Scout uniform; various bowling trophies; photos of me in the little league softball and soccer teams.
Who makes a list with semicolons? Commas man, commas.
As of this writing, I’m likely still serving one of several grounded for life sentences.
You aren’t really serving, maybe just under the “influence/penalty” of one but I suppose folks will get the point.
shenanigans. she called the arcade
Just missing capitalization here.
she called the arcade and sweet-talked the couple into giving me up. They never suspected her ulterior motives; Mom had a way with people. She not only read them like a book, but could adjust her demeanor with the ease of a professional actor to get what she wanted.
This could be better structured with matching ideas in the same sentences: “She called the arcade and sweet-talked the couple into giving me up; they never suspected her ulterior motives. Mom had a way with people, she not only read them like a book but could adjust her demeanor with the ease of a professional actor to get what she wanted.”
Five visits to the smoke-filled, drug-riddled video game shithole
I’m guessing it wasn’t really smoke-filled or drug-riddled so how about some quotes to show that’s what your mom thought of the place?
of the myriad activities
I was about to say this was a noun and needed a preposition, then found out that the adjective requires no modification to the word’s spelling, it is the same as the noun; English be crazy.
I was out of the city, away from the game, on vacation, but as each day plodded along, there was more to do, and more to see, and more to keep busy with, thanks to my mother’s unrelenting schedule.
I don’t want to pause this much when reading a sentence. “I was out of the city, away from the game on vacation but as each day plodded along, there was more to do and more to see and more to keep busy with, thanks to my mother’s unrelenting schedule.” Removing the commas after each “and” also helps to convey the exasperation a bit.
But as luck would have it, the living room patio door faced west, and at the end of the work day, the sun shone back through, greeting anyone entering through the front door. It was just the right angle to catch my hand print left from the hookup.
This part threw me off a bit, might be too much information/worded strangely. “But as luck would have it, the patio door faced west and at the end of the work day the sun shone into the living room. It was just the right angle for the light to catch my hand print left on the wall.”
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I shortened this further, but the implication is that it is tongue-in-cheek: I’m not really serving them – but the reader should get it that it was a ridiculous and unenforceable punishment.
Rephrased both sentences.
Agreed, rephrased.
Coincidentally, the worst movie I had to sit through as a kid was:
Irony: My Mom forced me to sit through this film, directed by Sydney Pollack…the same director of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
Holy hell, that’s like one of my mom’s fav movies as well…