Just right

Once upon a time there were three bears who lived in a spacious upper middle-class home in the far suburbs. The mortgage was well beyond their means. As if that weren't enough, they felt they had to have two high-status automobiles so the neighbors would respect them. Both Mama Bear and Papa Bear had to work full-time to keep up the payments. This was really inconvenient when it came time for hibernation, and consequently the Bear family was rather cranky.

One day as Papa Bear was ripping through the neighbor's garbage, Ranger Dan approached him with an offering of porridge. The porridge was too hot, and it burned Papa Bear's sensitive lips. He tore out Ranger Dan's liver and ate him instead. This cheered Papa Bear up a bit, but alas his good cheer was destined to be short-lived.

Papa Bear took the rest of the porridge home with him later that day and gave it to Mama Bear. She tasted it and found it was too cold. She flew into a rage, which surprised Papa Bear although it shouldn't have since he would have known it was the last straw had he been paying attention to the relationship all these years instead of taking her for granted like some kind of Hausfraubär or something, strutting and pontificating and farting and heaving his disgusting deer-gut around the house. She dumped the porridge all over Papa Bear and pounced on him. Sitting on his chest to pin him to the floor, she roared and swiped at him with her razor-sharp claws once for each of the unforgiven disappointments she had been carefully cataloguing in her mind since their first date many years earlier. Then she gave him one extra for good measure and as advance payment for the next insult which she was certain would come before sundown.

It was to this unfortunate scene that Baby Bear returned from his daily rounds of terrorizing the neighborhood children and eating their pets. He comforted his mother and calmed her. She got off Papa Bear's chest and squatted down next to him. Baby Bear squatted across from her, on the other side of his father. He licked up some of the porridge from Papa Bear's filthy, matted (and now bloodstained) fur, and declared it was neither too hot nor too cold. Mama Bear sampled the porridge as well. The two of them agreed the warm blood had brought the food to the perfect temperature, and they tucked in. Papa Bear bled out slowly and died in great pain.

Mama Bear scolded Papa Bear for leaving a mess on the floor, and for being generally lazy. As she cleaned up the mess, she reminded him that she is not a maid or a slave, and that were she remunerated at standard union rates for all the work she did around the cave day in and day out she would be pulling down a cool $508,000 per annum. She interpreted his silence to mean he did not care, and did not respect her. She duly added the incident to her mental catalogue of injustices, and wondered how in the world she could ever have believed he had any potential to be molded into shape by the guiding hand of woman. She didn't know whether to feel embarrased by the mere fact of her association with him or bitter about having wasted her youth on him.