Red Humour

A papa tomato and a mama tomato are walking down the street with baby tomato lagging behind. Papa tomato yells, “You better catch up or I’ll make you ketchup!”

A well-meaning onlooker reports the utterance of a death threat to the police who fill out a report and then refer the matter to the child protection authorities. CAS investigates and learns about more incidents -- all exaggerated to greater or lesser degrees -- from the young one who is all too happy to tattle on Dad since Dad cut his video game playtime short to watch darts on the telly. The Children's Aid Society (CAS) informs the mother that she must choose: either she can leave the home and take her baby with her or CAS will be forced to apprehend the child from their home to protect it from the father's violent disposition. She flees with baby tomato in the night.

Dad is furious. He uses a picture he printed out from Facebook of the CAS worker as a dartboard. A couple months later, he drives for 1.25 hours in after-work traffic to the supervised access facility run by CAS in the abandoned coat hanger factory on the other side of the city only to find out that the visit has been cancelled but the same CAS worker that has become the target of his animosity failed to inform him. He unleashes an outburst of invective that include derogatory comments about the skin colour of the CAS worker, who happens to be black. This time the police do more than write up a report.

Hate-crime charges are laid. The father's lawyer, appointed by the state, is clear that jail time is all but inevitable due to a previous conviction he received for getting in a bar brawl during uni. (He got those charges stayed by completing an anger management course but the meetings were mostly an opportunity for the "instructor" to talk about his own problems to a captive audience.) The lawyer advises a plea of guilty in so many words. But before the father can even get to a plea hearing -- let alone fight the case -- he loses his job and his sense of dignity with it. He joins a Men's Rights Activists group and finds solace there for a while before he starts questioning how he became so emotionally attached to rhetoric spewn by people completely in denial about any culpability they may have for their own problems.

A week before the trial is set to begin, he takes his last $60 out of an ATM and hails a taxi to get a ride downtown. He rides up to the top of the tallest building and then looks out at the grey, gloomy sky. Eyes facing forward, one, two, three steps and plunges to his death. Red liquid spatters across the pavement. A fellow at the intersection nudges his equally well-dressed friend in the ribs and inquires with a cocked eyebrow, "Are they filming a sequel to Cloudy with a chance of meatballs already?"