Tandem Post: The Age of Outcry

This is the last post in a series of four Tandem Blog posts where Dave Luis and Megan Furniss and myself have each picked a title and the three of us have written whatever it has inspired in us. So far we have done That Nagging Feeling… followed by 37 Million Miles… and lastly Boundaries. The fourth and final title was opened up to the Facebook and the most popular suggestion was by Valerie Anderson aka tbV [the beautiful Val] and it prompted the following piece. Be sure to read Dave and Megan’s pieces once you have finished with mine and if you like them, please leave a comment and tell us why…

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The Age of Outcry

It was the best of crimes. It was the worst of crimes.

He stared at the newspaper headline, unable to believe his eyes. Although ‘newspaper headline’ felt like a bit of a misnomer as this barely 60 word information snippet had been buried all the way back on page 9, opposite the local entertainment page, where non stories came to die. Or began their mere breath-of-a-life relatively stillborn.

Yet there it was. ‘Another cheetah killed by hunter’. Another cheetah? Poor bugger didn’t even get a name.

One of the lost girls coughed anxiously behind him. Poor children. Ever the eternal optimists. But it was his turn now and he wasn’t going to hand over the newspaper so quickly. They could drink in their disappointment later. He hadn’t even attempted the chess problem yet.

But the front page? The opening page of yesterday’s newspaper was announcing Woman’s Day – the one day in the year when men were supposed to treat woman as people, or something. Get their own damn coffee for a change or something equally as life-transformative.

He glanced across at his Twitter feed. #AllAnimalsMatter. He liked that one. It was good to see the #BlackLivesMatter movement using his moment to refocus the world on them. He had even chuckled out loud at the meme. COL. That should be a thing. He made a mental note to start using it.

Clicking yet another tab to see how Facebook was faring, he quickly noticed that all the rainbow-faces which had given way to pics of him [or one of his ‘kind’] were now largely filled with an assorted arrangement of pictures of statues with women’s lingerie hanging off them.

Cecil sighed a deep sigh. “Must be cancer awareness time again.”

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Be sure to check out the other amazing posts with this same title with: