Personal Narrative: A New Law

I had just walked in the door from playing in the enormous yard behind our house, when I suddenly see my mother and father hunched over, whispering. I had accidently gotten dirt all over me, and didn’t want mother to see. I could tell they weren’t discussing something happy, because my mother had worry lines plastered on her forehead. But the telltale sign that something was terribly wrong was that my father’s eyes were as dull as murky water.

My parents hadn’t noticed me standing there, so I listened to the hushed whispers that barely carried across the room. I heard snippets of their conversation, like “paper”, “taxes are too high”, “we don’t have the money”. I couldn’t bear to listen to any more of the worried talk. My curiosity got the best of me, so I had to know what was happening. I closed the door loudly to give away my presence in the room. My parent’s heads whipped around so fast, they must have gotten whiplash. “Oh, Alice. It’s only you. You scared us,” my mother said, her hand over her chest. “Had something happened? I heard you talking about paper? Or taxes. Something like that,” I questioned.

“Parliament has made a new law stating that every piece of paper printed has to be taxed. This includes cards, and pamphlets, and stamps, and, oh, there is nothing we can do, ” she said. I let those words register in my head. Being ten, I didn’t quite understand why this was a seemingly atrocious thing. At least Parliament was making some effort to raise funds and help us pay to fix things. “But isn’t that going to help raise funds for Parliament and us?” I questioned, very confused about the whole situation. “No, you don’t understand,” my mother signed, and then my mother gave my father a look. A look that said she didn’t want to explain this, she was too exhausted from dealing with today’s events. So my father took