Summary

This story begins with the narrator complaining that his mother would describe minuscule experiences as “adventures.” He explains that she used to do this until his father died which caused his mother to not leave the house as often.

While cleaning out his father’s things from, his childhood home, the narrator finds a red stone idol. He asks his mother about it and she explains it is something he obtained while he was in the army (he was stationed in Germany, but he found the idol in Kazakhstan). According to the mother, he once stated that he should not have kept it because people were once after it, however those people died when pterodactyls downed their plane. The narrator questions this because pterodactyls are extinct, but his mother brushes it off. She goes on to tell the narrator that these people deserved...