No one wants to fight, really.

But when tension mounts and we can't take it anymore, well, it's time to take the gloves off.

I'm Meg Wallitzer, and on this selected shorts, fiction about close combat with the ones we love most.

Who starts it, who finishes it, and who survives to say they were right.

Stay with me for the Blow by Blow.

You're listening to Selected Shorts where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time.

We all have our triggers, more than a simple nuisance.

Some deeply felt emotional provocations just set us off.

Who knows, maybe someone pronounces our name wrong or choose with their mouth open or says

the word dollop, and we just hate the word dollop for some reason. It could be anything. The important

thing is, these triggers bypass our rational brains and, despite our best intentions, put us in a

pugilistic frame of mind. The infuriating stimuli can create a heightened state

in us, one that we might find uncomfortable or downright intolerable. But, as any writer will tell you,

these instances of annoyance are also full of possibilities for drama and comedy. So in the next

hour, while you're comfortable and calm and definitely not rehearsing the

zingers, you might hurl at a loved one the next time they say dollop, let's hear some fiction

about intimate emotional combat. Each of our stories is about a family or partners in a highly

combustible situation. In one, a debate over driving directions becomes

downright stupido. In a second, a girl loves her aunt and her family. They're mud-slinging,

not so much. And in a third, a wife livens up her marriage by inviting a third party to join,

the decluttering guru, Marie Kondo. We'll begin with a story by Jenny Allen. We've

offered her short, pithy, often personal stories on the show before. She's irreverent and wryly

...