This is a story I wrote with Harry B. Sanderson's help for Six Sentences. Sentences #1, #3 and #6 are based on a seminal event in little Miss Z's childhood. Harry filled in the blanks.

THOU SHALT NOT!

Ten-year-old Miss Z was in her bible study class, listening to glowering Mr. Wingnut exhorting her and the other children to obey god's ten commandments or risk burning in hell, and she was pretty scared and wanted to be sure she didn't break any of those rules, but then, omigod, she realized that she didn't know what commandment number six meant, so how could she know whether or not she was doing it?

Her fifth grade class had already studied prefixes and suffixes, but try as she may she could not figure how adding "ery" could change the otherwise familiar word “adult” into something sinful. or for that matter how she could be guilty of anything beyond childery, whatever that was, anyway. So she raised her hand, waving frantically, until Mr. Wingnut stopped exhorting long enough to say, "What IS it, Miss Z," and Miss Z blurted out her question, "What does adultery mean?"

The frank question triggered deeply embedded left-wing alerts and Wingnut stumbled, stammering, "Tax and spend...er, uh...liberal media...oh wait REDISTRIBUTE! that's what... oh geez…” Adept at exhortery, he'd suffered a failure in strategery by allowing the question.

Miss Z was puzzled by her teacher's obvious discomfort, but she was relieved, because she was from a poor family that had nothing to distribute, much less redistribute, so she was pretty sure she would not be committing adultery, at least not until she was an adult and maybe have some money of her own.