You've been cerved.

Tamra

Tamra's whole university dorm hall had called her C3PO after that, beatboxing Darth Vader's Imperial March whenever she appeared at group events. And it hadn't mattered how often she'd tried to explain that the Imperial March had nothing to do with C3PO - if anything, her lectures had only encouraged the ridicule.

Since that little episode, Tamra slept with the clock. R2D2 didn't get far in the bed.

"Got you," Tamra breathed, pulling R2 out of a pillowcase and switching him off. (Tamra always thought of R2 as a precocious, bratty little boy.)

"Tamra, are you listening? This is important. I will know more this afternoon," Tamra's mother finished sharply.

Tamra crawled back to the phone and made assenting noises in the direction of her phone's microphone. 

"As I was saying..." her mother continued. 

Experimentally, Tamra sniffed her arm pits. She frowned and glanced at the time on her phone. It was too late for a shower - she'd have to scrub what she could and lather on the deodorant. The fifth graders she supervised would hardly notice. Anyways, fifth graders in general smelled much worse. 

Fifth graders were at that age that embraced hormones but not hygiene.

Tamra's mother raised her voice. "Also, I wanted to tell you that I emailed you some changes to the lesson plans we put together over the weekend. But then I realized you left your laptop here and wondered if I needed to drop it by the school or if you want to stop by my house? I know how nervous my children get when their mother has the audacity to stop by without phoning in advance..."

Tiny black holes all around, Tamra thought to herself. No reason to respond to her mother - her mother's gripe was probably more about Tamra's older sister Adrianne.

"I mean, when your sister Adrianne finally got back to me last night..."

Bingo.

"That girl is trying my nerves again. It's a wonder her son is so agreeable. Normally, I mean. Probably he takes after his grandfather. Ed was always agreeable," Her mother mused with more disdain than Tamra thought was necessary.

Adrianne and Justine, Tamra and Adrianne's mother, were having another one of their infamous, asynchronous, prolonged 'discussions' about Adrianne's life choices (or rather, at the moment, the choices that Adrianne 'allowed' or 'encouraged' - depending on who was doing the talking - her teenage son Darius to make).

The only thing Tamra's older sister Adrianne and their mother seemed to agree on was that seventeen-year-old Darius was amazing and very reminiscent of Ed, Tamra and Adrianne's dad. 

How Darius had managed to become so amazing (great grades, respectable manners, good looks) and what to do about it (send him to college or let him take a little 'academic break') made up the bulk of family disagreements, at least in Tamra's experience.

"It's like she wants him to ruin his life before it's even started," Tamra's mother complained, not for the first time. 

This week.

Tamra threw her covers on the bed and began to hunt for fresh underwear. Tamra traditionally lived out of boxes, refusing to buy furniture until she had less debt and more stability. Her nomadic lifestyle approach to her limited possessions was going on close to five years now. 

Unfortunately, Tamra didn't always remember which box was her laundry basket and which was her underwear-and-socks-and-bras-and-washcloth-and-sometimes-a-towel drawer. She wondered if she should label her boxes...