Tangy Tomato #4

It was my first day of fourth grade. I was the “new kid” in school. I was nervous, but as my kind-eyed, homely looking teacher called me “sweetie” and ushered me into the classroom to introduce me to my new classmates, I thought to myself “well, maybe this won’t be so bad.” I had never been at any school for more than two years, and I knew I would spend at least three years at this school, so in a way, I was looking forward to it. As we walked in I noticed that the other kids weren’t dressed like I was. They all wore their J-Crew khaki shorts, white Keds, and Ralph Lauren pastel colored polo shirts—a stark contrast to my black spandex leggings, black boots, and oversized black t-shirt adorned with a gold outline of the Eiffel Tower and “Paris” scrawled across the bottom. But they all smiled sweetly at me, introduced themselves, and made me feel at home. I liked them immediately.

During my first week of school, the pretty, “popular” girls let me sit at their table at lunch. I was the new girl, but I was interesting to them. I was Jewish and none of them were, nor had they heard much about the religion. They asked me questions and let me ramble on and on. I felt like we were becoming friends. I thought I fit in. I was happy.

Little did I know that these sweet, preppy looking fourth graders would make my life as miserable as I had ever known. Over the next three years, they would get boys I had crushes on to ask me out on dates, only to retract their fake offers in front of other classmates so they could all laugh at me. They no longer included me at lunch, and would even exclude me from games like SPUD and Red Rover during recess. No, things were not as they seemed.

The town I lived in had been a restricted community up until just a decade earlier; they didn’t allow Blacks or Jews to live there. Much of the racism and anti-Semitism that had been present long before my family ever moved to town still existed. I came to school one day and found a swastika had been etched on my desk. I didn’t understand. They hated me because of how I was born, something I couldn’t, nor wanted to control. They laughed at me on Wednesday afternoons when I was left alone with the teacher for a couple hours while they all went to CCD (a term that to this day I do not know the definition of, though I believe one of the Cs stands for Christian), I just knew it was something of which I was not a part. I was an “outcast.”

As time went on, I began to relish my “outcast” status. I started wearing black nail polish and stopped brushing my long, brown hair. I refused to look anything like the popular girls with their perfectly combed blonde hair, which they wore pulled back in a perfect ponytail with a white ribbon tied around it. I made friends with other “outcasts” and we made our own fun during birthday parties to which the whole class, aside from us, was invited. After three miserable years at that school, I finally moved away, to a much better place, where I had friends and was finally included. But, I learned from my experience. I learned to be resilient and not to take things at face value. I learned that a smile doesn’t always mean friendship and that the girl standing alone, wearing clothes that aren’t like mine, who is a different religion or race from me, might be someone just like that scared fourth grader wearing all black, wishing for a friend and hoping to be liked.

Benign Boysenberry #4

Dining Out

After they get their salads, she sees the hostess seat an attractive couple in their late twenties in a booth across the room..

“So, the couple behind me to the left – along the wall – what’s their story”, she says in a hushed whisper, referring to the newest couple in the dining room. They’ve already made decisions about the first date in the far corner and the “let’s meet the new boyfriend” party at the round table in the middle of the Sizzler dining room. She was glad the couple was in their section, it is nice to have some fresh prospects.

He gets back into the game, they play it all the time at restaurants and airports. Quietly he says, “He’s an investment banker, she took a job as a Rolex salesperson to meet a rich guy. He’s bored with her, she thinks he’s getting ready to pop the question.”

“No, look at their body language, he’s really into her. Do you see him lean in when she talks and stand up when she comes back from the bathroom? He likes her, a lot… He’s a software salesperson and they met when he sold a package to her office.” She’s the romantic, always wanting to make situations better than they were.

“Get up and go to the bathroom and take another look,” he tells her. He thinks her need for romance messes up the game. Sending her to the bathroom or out to the car to get something usually puts her back to seeing them how they really are.

She sits down after yet another fake bathroom visit thinking they need to go to more places with a salad bar, at least she’d get some food out of the drive-by scoping out sessions. She has a new take on the situation, “He’s a soldier on leave from Iraq, she’s the girl he’s been e-mailing all along.”

“Yea, and he’s found love in a Hummer and wants out, but he feels bad because she keeps sending him care packages and stuff, and his mom likes her,” he says with a knowing nod. “He can’t figure out how to tell her that he’s leaving her for a guy he met in the military. When they get out they are planning to open an antique store in the Berkshires and live happily ever after.”

She thinks his cynicism is over the top. Not every young person is on the make just because you are a randy old goat who wants to fuck around. Is he trying to tell me he’s gay? At this age? Nahh. She eats some salad. “Maybe they are newlyweds and she brought him here to tell him she’s pregnant with their first,” she whispers a bit wistfully.

“No, no, I’ve got it,” he says excitedly. “He’s her baby’s daddy and he’s begging her not to go on Jerry Springer to get the paternity test. He says he’d be embarrassed and his mom would have a fit because all the women in her church group watch the show.” He knows this will appeal to her daytime viewing habits…. “In fact, I think I saw them on a preview… someone throws a chair, I’m sure of it.”

She blushes slightly, thinking for the millionth time that she’s glad paternity tests and Jerry Springer weren’t around when her son Josh was born…. No, she thinks once again, she did the right thing, she married the good provider, even if he was a bit weird and probably not Josh’s biological father.

He pauses for a second and wonders why Josh looks like Barry, his best-friend in high school… he decides for the millionth time that it is a coincidence, because he and Barry look like brothers themselves.

The waitress brings their steaks. She thinks that the 65 and over special just ain’t what it used to be. “Hey, over in the corner, isn’t that the mayor? That isn’t his wife he’s sharing a bottle of wine with… hmm”. She knows it isn’t really the mayor and she also knows that her eyesight is better than his, so she can keep him going for the rest of the meal and keep his thoughts off the nice couple in the corner.

Along the wall, a young construction worker is treating his sister to dinner to commiserate about how it is hard to find someone to love. He says “so, what’s the story on that couple --- over your shoulder, the older couple with the glasses eating the senior specials… I think they’re an old married couple, they are lucky they got together before people fucked around on each other.”

G1 Removal, TKO #3

The following players received the most votes:

Cool Coconut
Odd Orange
Wacky Watermelon

This was a very close vote. They votes were mostly spread out. Of the fourteen contestants in G1, only one player did not get any votes. There were three more players with only one less vote than those who were removed.

Tart Tangerine #4

“Smile!”

The light flashed bright as the camera clicked and whirred, immortalizing forever Tommy and I at Homecoming. My dress was a lovely green, and he looked so handsome in his tuxedo, with matching vest (cummerbunds are so 1980s). We smiled and danced together, and I was the belle of the ball.

And why shouldn’t I be? I was the most popular girl in school. But I wasn’t like the girls you see in the movies – the plastics of Mean Girls. I tried to be nice to everyone, regardless of clique. Maybe it was watching the Breakfast Club so many times as a middle-schooler, but I vowed that when I got to high school, I would be different. I’d try to see people as people and not as labels.

I said hi to all my friends, and gave a hug to Matt, the cute, geeky guy who was the equipment manager of the football team. We actually dated our freshman year. It was how I met Tommy. He was a football player, the star running back. I would come to practice to talk to Matt, and I got to know all the guys.

Eventually, things didn’t work out between us, and at the end of my sophomore year, Tommy asked me out. We’ve been together ever since. I know it seems trite and cliché, but we really did have the perfect high school romance, like in the teen movies.

At least for a while.

Things got rough about two months ago, right before senior year. Tommy had injured himself during practice and so he lost his starting position on the varsity squad. Coach felt bad, so he didn’t cut Tommy. Always held out the hope that the trainer would allow Tommy to go back in. Tommy was really stressed about going to a good college. He was afraid his injury would prevent him from getting a scholarship. That’s when he started getting moody.

If it had just been that, things might have been okay. But things got progressively worse.

I listened to all my friends talk about how lucky I was. They all wished they had a guy as great as Tommy, they’d tell me. But that’s because they only saw Tommy at school, when he put on his happy face. They didn’t see him at night, when the façade fell away and his darker mood gripped him. They certainly didn’t see him on Friday nights, after sitting on the bench. Or last night, when the new running back scored two touchdowns.

And so here I am, under the spotlight, dancing with Tommy after being declared Homecoming Queen, not wearing the backless dress I wanted, and hoping my classmates don’t see me wince through my smile as Tommy puts his hand on my lower back, a touch more gentle than the one he’d used the night before.

Just another Homecoming Queen, leading the perfect life.

Classy Cherry #4

His eyes are grey and mysterious. He often looks right through people as if he can’t see them at all. He hasn’t had young eyes since before he was shipped off to war. When he first arrived in the South Pacific, he couldn’t stop laughing. Here he was in a postcard paradise -- palm trees, warm ocean waters, and friendly brown women. They sent him here to this beautiful place and told him to kill. Kill enemy soldiers. Eradicate dangerous civilians. Extinguish all threats to America’s freedom.

He’d seen with those eyes a naked child screaming while still clutching the bloody hand of his mother that’d been blasted off. He’d seen mosquitoes so thick on a dead soldier’s body that it looked like he was asleep under a thick black blanket. He’d seen an abandoned baby so skinny he could count her backbones and she ate feces with her dirty fingers.

He’d seen so much worse -- inhumane things beyond even your darkest nightmares. Things he never told anyone because he didn’t want them to have old eyes too. So he told his family he’d been a member of the supply crew. They’d believed he’d only transported weapons and never suspected that he’d used them to kill hundreds of people.

His memories and the secret made him an old man for many years. But now he was an old man because his body was all used up. He knew death was near, he could feel it hovering around his doorstep, but he wasn’t afraid. The war had scared all fear from his body so that nothing ever made him afraid.

One afternoon, like a flash of lighting, he decided that before he died he wanted the Combat Action Ribbon he’d earned. The Marines decorate soldiers to celebrate their honor and courage including those who’d fought in combat. He hadn’t ever asked anyone for the ribbon because he’d lied to his family about his war experience. But in that moment, the old man decided that he wanted to be buried in his uniform. And he wanted the uniform to be complete.

He told his wife that evening. At first, she didn’t believe him. She thought it was a delirious memory of an old dying man but was too polite to put it that way. So she tried to correct him, “you were in supply.” But he was persistent. He told her his commander’s name and the place he’d been fighting. He needed her to find someone or something to confirm his combat experience so the military would give him the ribbon. She listened and wrote down all the details. She made many phone calls to locate his superiors or some information.

But forty years after the war, most of the officers had died and the records had disappeared. It was a tedious process and sometimes she felt like she was on an impossible chase but finally she was able to prove he was a combat solider. The military held a fancy ceremony to honor his service with hundreds of soldiers watching. He wheeled his chair up the ramp and bowed his head slightly when an officer saluted him before pining the ribbon to his chest.

Stop.

That’s not what happened. It’s only how I wanted it to happen but I died before my wife could prove I was in combat.

My wife kept searching for months but never found anyone that remembered me. The government documents about the war were sparse and too difficult to locate anyway. The night I died I knew she had already lost hope in finding anything. I wasn’t ever really sure she believed my story from the beginning. But I know by the end, she thought I was crazy. She was just so frustrated and she couldn’t understand why it mattered to me even if it was true.

But how could I tell her, the woman who believed the father of her children was a supply manager, that I had been a killer? I couldn’t make her understand that without a ribbon, my memories would never be shared with anyone. At least with the award, a secretary would read my letter requesting the award and for an instant think of me and perhaps what I’d seen. Now, nobody will remember. Nobody knows. Instead, when I was buried, all the memories floating in my head about the people I’d killed for democracy were locked in the fancy casket with me. We hadn’t even buried those that we killed. We’d just piled their bodies in tall mounds in the middle of their towns and burned them then the stench got too strong.

Strange Strawberry #3

“It was within the third generation of creation in which we, humans, learned illness amongst our people. Until then, Death only acted as a final arbiter of Life once the soul had accomplished what she was meant to do on Earth. The mechanism, the one that is often referred to as “old age” in your newspapers, was the body being released back to the Earth as we returned to the greater ether. While Death certainly collected final payment on those who died while feuding, this was an uncommon occurrence as conflict and war amongst the different people did not become known until the seventh generation of creation.

As we know now, and the people of previous ages were aware of, illness comes in the form of a life. Often, it will be the interaction between our bodies and some other body that produces an illness in us. To heal ourselves, we attempt to remove the offending form of life. Our shamans have used various ceremonies to communicate with these beings and ask them to leave, and even new religions, like the priests who have visited our lands for the previous twelve generations, have had their own attempts to communicate with them. For the shaman, it is the spirit that afflicts the individual, for a priest, it is a demon, and for doctors, it is a bacteria or virus.

The gods, while being pleased with the accidental creation of the grain people, became interested in their own affairs as two of the greater beings appeared to be in conflict. The god of Death was refusing to talk with his natural partner, the goddess of Life. While being each other’s partner in terms of their role amongst the universe, they were also intimately tied in the fabric of their existence. While, usually, they enjoyed the company of each other immensely, the friction of their roles had carried over into their relations as beings. Life had wanted to create a ‘watcher’ being on Earth to maintain a balance amongst the organisms, but to do this, the watcher would have to outlast all the other creatures on the earth and be able to exist through several generations. However, Death objected to this creation as it was his role to determine the natural cycle of creation, Life’s duty was to assign the purpose of all creation and to give it existence.

While seemingly a minor dispute, it erupted into a heated argument that left neither partner talking to the other one. Without this communication, new life was dying before its purpose could be carried out. In response to this, Life would create more beings to carry out their universal purpose – which would be killed prematurely by Death.

The other gods, seeing this as upsetting the established peace on Earth sought to get the two gods communicating again. The gods summoned the children of Life and Death, the spirits of Love and Fear, to help mediate the conflict between the couple and asked them to do what they could. Seeing as this was the first real conflict between the two who tied together, the spirits sought to visit Earth. Knowing that the grain people were all tied together in their creation, Love and Fear began to visit and study the people to see if there was a way to tie people together beyond their conflicts. While this may seem like a simple task, before the third generation, the grain people did not know either spirit.

It was with this first experience in which disease was first introduced into the grain people. The spirits noticed that while conflict could occur amongst various people, two polarizing experiences could bring them back together: the reminder of their mortality and the reminder of their life purpose. After an initial dispute occurred, Fear had brought illness and accident to one of the partners, and saw that the dispute was quickly forgotten. Love, on the other hand, created symbols of partnership (a daughter of these symbols is known to us as marriage) and food of arousal to the people, which also settled the disputes.

Fear and Love told the Gods of what they saw among the grain people, and the solution to the problem was quickly reached. Seeing as the gods did not want to know disease, they asked Love to bring all the foods of Love to the two partners for their next meal. Life and Death sat down to a feast of tomatoes, potatoes, bread, honey, and wine. When the meal was finished, the Life and Death became enamored again with their universal partner. This coupling resulted in a new offspring and a compromise to the feud, the pine tree. The pine is the watcher tree of Earth as it lasts through more generations than any other organism on the planet.

Seeing as conflict was becoming more common amongst the grain people as there were more children being created, Fear and Love continued to remind the people of Life and Death as a way to resolve their minor disputes. This caused the spirits to not only be children of the gods, but also active guardians of their creations. It is because of this initial interaction that we still know the two spirits, and who the shaman speaks to when she is attempting to cure illness. "

He empties his pipe out onto a clay plate as he breathes out the final lungful of smoke. My trance continues for a few moments as I think about the cancer research and testing we do on animals back at the university and try to ponder if the spirits of Fear is a metaphor for me and what necessary work I do to resolve the dispute between us and what I consider to be a great killer – or maybe he sees that my work as an unnecessary struggle against the inevitable. However, he does speak fondly of the shamans…

“I need to rest before the village returns from work,” he interrupts my thoughts. I thank him for the conversation and assure him that I will be back sooner, rather than later, as I exit the house. While it is a simple story, I feel there is something that I am missing as I walk towards my car to return to the city.

TKO Question #4 for Group 2

TKO Question #4: [Fiction]

Though the air is so soft and the sky so blue, you have, I know not why, a feeling of something hotly passionate that beats like a throbbing pulse through the crowd. Though the native policeman ... gives the scene an air of respectability, you cannot but feel that it is a respectability only of the surface: a little below there is a darkness and mystery.

W. Somerset Maugham on Hawaii

Write about a scene or story where things aren't quite as they seem.

**

Responses

Responses marked with an asterick were the most popular responses to this TKO.

Rare Raspberry
*Alert Apple
* Classy Cherry
Playful Peach
* Tangy Tomato
* Mighty Mango
* Tart Tangerine
Bright Blueberry
* Benign Boysenberry
* Crazy Clementine
Pretty Papaya

Players Removed as a Result of This Vote

Culture Cranberry (inactivity)
Naive Noni (inactivity)
Gnarly Grape

Lively Lime #3

The familiar drumbeats of that current hit song begin to play. The lights dim, the disco ball glitters, and our feet are on the dance floor.

…Shakedown 1979, cool kids never have the time
On a live wire right up off the street
You and I should meet…

We are on the brink of adolescence. Girls baring shoulders for the first time, boys' hearts stirring. This is summer camp. This is paradise.

I know his face. He's been smiling at me all week. The night air invigorates us, and we know we should dance together. Through the sea of people, I glide over towards him, slightly embarrassed that I'm wearing sandals. I forgot to pack dress shoes. Glancing at his feet, I see sneakers. No tie. But he's still wonderful. He holds out his hand, with a nervous yet gentle smile. Something beautiful is about to happen.

…Junebug skipping like a stone
With the headlights pointed at the dawn
We were sure we'd never see an end to it all…

Arms around my waist. Slightly sweaty cheeks touch. Our eyes are closed, and we are in another world. In my mind, I am floating on waves of soft purple light. This energy, this music, envelops me. There is a cascade of possibilities…how much happiness I could feel, and how rich a life I could live. This is just the beginning, and best of all…I think this boy likes me.

…Faster than the speed of sound
Faster than we thought we'd go, beneath the sound of hope…

We continue to sway, sharing the dream together. As the sounds rise and fall with each chorus, my heart beats faster. He gets it, I know he feels that other universe. Maybe his waves are blue, I imagine. I peek and see other couples twirling around us, some also consumed by the energy, some not. The girl getting her feet stepped on is definitely not. Too bad, she's missing out on so much.

Finally, the song begins to fade. The purple waves float away like vapor, and my eyes are forced to adjust to the flickering lights coming back on. Just as the dream vanishes, he tightens his hold, kisses me on the corner of my lips, and mouths "Thank you."

…The street heats the urgency of sound
As you can see there's no one around...

I look at his eyes closely for the first time. Soft blue.

The next day, camp was over and we both went home, never to return. But for those four and a half minutes on the dance floor that night, we made unforgettable magic together.

Lucky Lemon #3

Sunday nights were the best. After a long weekend, people spent the night at home, so the shop was always relatively empty. She was free to dance about and do as she pleased. A barista at a locally owned coffee shop, she had a true passion for her work. There was something beautiful about a perfectly pulled espresso that made her smile. It was Sunday night and she was in a good mood.

He had missed her. Without her in his arms, life had been hard. He’d left her for all the wrong reasons and had stayed away because of worse ones. Lonely on his first night off in a while, he decided to go driving. An old pastime, he cruised around town in his rickety, rusty little car. He had the windows rolled down thanks to a lack of air conditioner, and the breeze flew through blond hair in desperate need of a haircut. Picky with his taste in music, he’d change channels until he found a song he liked and then sang along. He knew he was tone-deaf, but she’d always encourage him, tell him he was doing better. He’d always loved that about her. He found a station playing Our Lady Peace and turned it up. He was in a good mood.

All the customers were gone and she changed the CDs in the five-disc changer to CDs of her own. She counted the money in the cash register, cleaned the espresso machine, and cleaned the tables, all the while dancing to her hastily compiled mix CDs. The outside light was dimming by the time she began washing the dishes. As she carefully washed the porcelain mugs, their song came over the speakers. Slow acoustic guitar and the sound of a saxophone create the entry for Edwin McCain’s raspy voice. Each word cut into her mind. Each built a picture of a night not too long before.

Laying on the cheap black futon underneath her lofted bed in her dorm room, it had happened. He took his freedom from her. They’d spent too much time together, not knowing how to be without one another, and it was time to be apart. He was pretty sure he loved her, but wasn’t quite. He wanted to explore life in college and not be tied down his last two years. She had to let him go. She laid on the futon and he held her as she cried. Her fiery brown eyes stained with mascara, her face was lit in the glow of cheap Christmas lights. He hated making her cry. “It’s not forever. We can still be together, just not only us together. See other people. Try other things. You know.” He kissed her forehead lightly and squeezed her tight. She looked up at him, eyes still watery, hungry for an answer in his face.

He kissed her. She sank into him, dissolved into the love overcoming her spirit. Opening her eyes, she knew he could see deep within her soul. So vulnerable, she closed her eyes and felt. Felt his fingers brush her face, his tongue sweetly part her lips, his body pressed against hers. She played with his hair and they rolled together. Sweet and beautiful, she began to cry as she fell in love all over again. She didn’t think he’d remember that night, so long ago, when he’d held her hand and sang to her. How tone-deaf he was and how it’d made her giggle inside when he’d tried to hit the high notes. How when she’d gotten home, she’d had to lean against the door after she’d shut it behind her to catch her balance. It came flooding back with more tears. “Please don’t cry.”

“It’s okay. They’re not bad, I promise.”

Hands drifted, familiar in their paths as their bodies entwined. He kissed her deeply and passionately and then stared deeply in her eyes. How could he express to her how much he was hurting, too? Lost in a sea of feeling and expectation, he’d done the only thing he’d known how. So scared, he was so scared that he’d never see her dimples, hear her whisper childish French phrases, or just simply hold her again. She was beautiful in this moment, even with the tears, so open and honest. Never had he been loved so completely. She’d trusted him in everything from what movie to watch to his reckless driving. He always drove, even though they lived so far apart. His favorite times were driving her back to her car at Starbucks. The only person he knew to get off work to go to another similar establishment. He even loved how much she loved coffee. Here, in this moment, he was one with her. Looking into her eyes once more, she began to whisper, “The strands in your eyes”. She was singing.

There, below the cheap lights in her dorm room, they moved quietly together. Singing along to a song in their heads they were lost in one another. Gasping between verses and crying out at others, they’d never felt so alive, so in love. As the song reached the bridge, they came together. Not knowing what to do next, they stayed melded and clinging to one another.

A tear fell into the soapy water filled with dishes. It had been so long since she’d thought of that moment, let alone relived and embraced it. The one tear turned into many and as she began to fall onto the sink, two arms reached from behind and caught her.

There was nowhere to drive without being alone. Past the old Starbucks where they’d shared many drinks and his old high school track where she’d told him so many of her dreams, every turn filled with images of her. Restaurants where they’d eaten, bars where they’d had more than a few, each piled onto the one before it. Not knowing where to go, he pulled into the parking lot and stared into the windows. Sunday night, her favorite. There she was, hair thrown back into a makeshift bun, dancing and flailing her arms. Her dancing not much better than his singing. He laughed as she seemed so free and he missed being free with her. He got out of the car when she stopped and began the last task of the evening. She always forgot to lock the door on Sundays, too distracted by her fun.

She whirled in his arms. “What are you do—“

“I missed you. That simple.”

“I told you you would. Never listened, never will. One of these days you’re just gonna have to admit I’m right.” She smiled cheekily, praying he wouldn’t notice the tear in her eye.

He smiled. Still as much of a smart ass as ever. For the first time in ages, he nabbed her into his arms and kissed her. A little rough, a bit playful, and filled with love, he pulled away. “That’s as good as you’re gonna get. You done yet? Aw, hurry up and let’s get outta here.”

Odd Orange #3

-Just to preface, I have no idea how this follows the prompt. I sat down to write about something magical . . . but I ended up with this instead. Oh well.

If my Mom and Dad both go to my baseball game my Dad always stomps away, and then yells at me later for not telling him that Mom was going to the game. Mom and Dad didn’t act like this when they were still married, but since they got their divorce they haven’t spoken. I don’t see my Dad much anymore. He lives in the garage behind the house, and sometimes in his office. During his weekends we go camping or stay in room 101 at the Wildcat Canyon Motel. The Motel is OK because we stay right next to the pool, but I hate camping. I especially hate camping in the morning when my dad fry’s bacon and puts it on top of our Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I hate bacon.

I like my Dad when he is nice. He used to let me sit in the old Austin-Healey convertible that he was trying to fix in our back garage when he was still married to my Mom. I would pretend like I was driving through the country, and everyone wanted to be friends with me because I had a really cool car.

Now the Austin-Healey is covered by a bunch of towels and Dad has a pad that he sleeps on next to it. I only saw the garage because I was spying from across the alley. Dad doesn’t let us see the garage anymore. He doesn’t want anyone to know that he sleeps there. He still lets us see his office, but he always hides his blankets in the cabinet.

Last week, I was on the computer in Dad’s office, and I decided to read some of the letters he wrote. My Dad is a letter person. I usually liked his letters, when they were about my future, but sometimes they were about how I misbehaved with my grandparents and was just like my Mom. I don’t like those letters very much.
The letter I looked at talked about the Bitch of Birch Street. I have lived at 1046 Birch Street for eight years. We used to live with my Dad, but now he isn’t allowed to come into the house. If we want to see him we have to go somewhere else. He usually takes us to his office.

I always like it when Dad let me use his computer. I usually got on the Internet, and look at websites. But today I had already looked at Disney and MTV and I was bored. I didn’t want to be a snoop, but the only way I find out about what is happening is by doing things I am not supposed to. The letter was to his lawyer, and it talked about how my Mom wasn’t a good person because she took all his money, so he had to get her back. In the morning, when he was throwing the newspapers for his paper route, he would stop in front of my Mom’s house. When he stopped he would slip across the lawn and dump gasoline on it. He thought it was funny that there was just a dirt patch on the lawn instead of green.

I wanted to tell my Mom, but I figured that telling someone wouldn’t be a good idea, because it would get my Dad into trouble. He is always afraid of getting into trouble. That is why I can’t see the Austin-Healey anymore, and why he hides the blankets in his office. It is much better to just let my Mom yell at me for forgetting to plant the grass seed.

I always try to make the grass grow, but I guess that gasoline isn’t like the compost heap in the backyard. No matter how many times you water it, lawn doesn’t like to grow when the soil is soaked in gas.

Gutsy Guava #3

As I left my house, at roughly 6:00, the feeling coursing through me could have been described as melancholy, like it always could when I went out on a run. By the time I was reaching mile 4, I had settled into the familiar groove of the route like a phonograph needle circling a favorite album. My feet hit the concrete in a rhythmic pattern that I was able to lose myself in, and lose myself I did for the next 10 miles, until I reached the coastline. Cresting the final hill in the outgoing direction, my vision swam and my blood burned in my veins like acid, sweat evaporating in the cool night air causing me to shiver, despite feeling quite hot. I dropped the pace, realizing that running any faster would burn me out before reaching home. I jogged along the highway and turned off into a parking lot above the beach, and stopped.

Beaches in this part of California are as far from the stereotypes you see on postcards as can be. Jagged rocks that waves constantly pound against, creating a constant state of mist that only heightened the chill of already cold air. Steep cliffs, that drop off to narrow bands of sand that barely pass for beaches at all. The entire thing is really quite dramatic, perfectly suited to deep philosophizing and hypothermia.

My breath formed billowing clouds of vapor in front of me as I panted, still feeling a burning sensation in my legs from the trip out. I had read the articles about lactic acid buildup, and the necessity of a proper cool down, but really didn’t care tonight. On wobbly legs I stood at the top of the staircase leading down to the shoreline. It was 92 steps long, 92 steps that I knew very well from hours of repeats. With a deep breath, I began down.

The first 10 steps were gone fast, and I felt strong
The burning sensation began at step 13, and I gritted my teeth
The burning turned to a searing at 20
The searing turned to a weak pulse at 26; the bodies rev limiter kicking in
The endorphins they talk about, the natural high must be on the way by now
But at step 34 it still burns, and my breath is beginning to become ragged and erratic
I began to slow down, sensing bile rising in my throat and a hot, prickly sensation creeping across my chest.

When I misstep
And my left ankle rolls over as though it’s straining to touch the ground
But there is no ground
Because that’s where the stairs end, and the hill that slopes down to the beach takes over.

I’m so exhausted that it seems oddly hilarious to be suddenly falling down the same hill I used the stairs to avoid, until I realize that it’s really steep. I have the obligatory flailing moment of terror before I hit the ground and roll down for a few feet in a small sandstorm, seeming to hit every hard thing on the way down. My face catches on a rock and I slide down to the beach, suddenly noticing how loud the waves are down here compared to up above. The searing sensation is back, only now it’s running across my face and forearms instead of my legs.

I ungrit my teeth
And take a breath
And inhale the mouthful of blood that I had carried down the hill
Supposedly humans can swallow a pint of blood before getting sick.

Which only provides a mild sort of condolence because a pint isn’t much when it’s 9 at night and you just fell down a hill 14 miles from your house, and have no means of contact with anyone who could help you. I twist my limbs and roll my neck, and everything seems to be working out okay, aside from soreness, scrapes, and a tweaked ankle. Mentally, I sigh. I would have physically sighed, but I was still panting. The burning, the heaving, the pain. All of it seemed so trivial as I sat there in the sand, alone for miles. The only important thing was the intensity I felt so clearly.

The waves that broke over the rocks seemed not to break, so much as fold over and dissolve into the sea and air. The sand was made of thousands of individual particles, all of them working together and yet against each other in order to support my weight. I felt light, and the pain and soreness melted away. It seemed, that for just a second, everything was perfect. Not in an overemotional, or even excessively pragmatic way. It simply was, and that was all that there was.

I still run, only now I know why. It isn’t my health, or the feeling, or superiority factors, nothing I can easily describe. It has the power to bring me back, and make things like pain or complexity fail to be significant. I hesitate to claim magic, but until it comes around, it’s probably the closest I can get.

Mad Mandarine #3

I've never been a good swimmer. I learned all the strokes- freestyle was okay, breaststroke wasn't, butterfly was essentially an exercise in drowning myself and I would zig-zag back and forth between the lane ropes anytime I tried backstroke, effectively swimming twice the length of the pool with each lap. I still loved the water, though. Not so much the chlorine scented, calm waters of the swimming pool, but the richer, stronger water of Lake Michigan. In Lake Michigan, I felt as though I was actually communicating with something. Nothing really dangerous swims in Lake Michigan, no sharks, no stingrays, no shrieking eels, so I could just float contentedly without any concerns.

So every summer when we visited my aunt and uncle I would run out to the lake and spend hours there. In retrospect I'm surprised that even in the dead heat of summer I didn't die of hypothermia. Only as an adult have I realized how cold the lake is.

It got to the point that my parents really didn't worry about me. I was only about 30 yards from the cottage, I knew how to swim and the area was fairly isolated. The neighbors all knew each other and all kept an eye on the kids. In spite of my attempts to seclude myself in the water, the beach was rarely deserted.

To this day, I'm not certain what happened. I know that I went out deeper than I usually did, but I don't remember much more than that.

What do I remember?

I remember the sudden tug downwards, the rushing water. I remember fighting, screaming, sucking in half a lungful of water. I remember not knowing which way was up. I remember the panic, if only in bits and pieces. My memories of the entire event are now like a shattered pieces of stained glass. I have a couple of large, crystal clear and vivid pieces that don't seem to connect to the others in any meaningful ways. I'm sure there is a whole picture, somewhere in my mind, but quite frankly I suspect it forms a Hieronymus Bosch nightmare, not a pastoral scene.

I remember the grip of the neighbor Mr. Simmons, clutching at my waist length hair, the only part of me he could grip. I remember the rough boards of the old fishing boat against my knees as I coughed up lungs full of water. Most of all, I remember cold knowledge of how nature could turn against me. I remember the fear. And I remember the seduction of such power- my parent's have never understood why I continually wander alone in the wilderness- it's not because I want to relive my near-drowning. Far from it. I just want to know that the power and magic of the moment was real, and not created by an oxygen-starved mind. I have never found that power again, not in all the years that have passed. I've probably ignored it. It's so far outside my control perhaps I don't want it to interrupt my type-A lifestyle. I'm not certain.

I now know what to do if I'm caught by an undertow. I know to swim with the current and then perpendicular. I know not to panic.

But if it happens again, I also know that I probably won't be able to help myself, and this time there probably won't be a rescue. I will panic, and maybe in panic I will lose the barriers that I have thrown up in my adulthood. My childhood was full of magic. Now I just search for it. I can't find it.

Wacky Watermelon #3

“Thank you.”

There was something magical in those words at that moment. The feeling Liv got after hearing them from her broken and confused friend filled her up with so much love and compassion that she felt like she could take on the entire world and help mend all the people who hurt as deeply as her friend has hurt. The past cuts on Julia’s arm leave scars of remembrance. The memories of emotions too difficult to bear. Emotions needing to be cut out in order to survive. It was always difficult to look at the scars on Julia’s arms and not see her own failure as a friend in each and every one of them. Had Liv been the friend she thought she was maybe it wouldn’t have been necessary for those cuts to be there.

The rain outside pounded the hospital window. She could see the beginning cells of a powerful thunderstorm on the horizon and remembered a weather report in the car on the way to the hospital saying there was a 70% chance of thunderstorms later that afternoon and possibly the next morning. She wondered if the power would go out in the hospital as she looked back at Julia; back at all those scars on the inside and out, and struggled not to remember the nightmare that had brought them to this point.

She first met Julia six years ago in high school. They were both clumsy, awkward sophomores who were desperate to graduate so as not to face the same mundane environment day after day. There was something that drew her to Julia. They both played on the junior varsity soccer team, and she always used to wonder why Julia would wear sleeves whether it was cold or not.

“She must just get cold easily, I guess.”

They became fast friends, and while going to the local diner at four in the morning to eat their special Oreo pie and drink coffee or hanging out at the local pool house were always fun, Liv could tell there was more to her friend then meets the eye. As they became closer and closer, Julia would let little bits and pieces come out. In no discernable order really, and that was the way Julia intended it. As long as they came out fragmented, there was little chance Liv would put it all together.

But she did. Liv understood the hellish environment her friend grew up in before being whisked away by child services and placed with her grandparents. Julia’s grandparents remained comfortably aloof, never wanting to admit what actually took place. Liv was angry; so angry for her friend. She wanted to hurt the people responsible. But she couldn’t, so she did the next best thing. Continued to support an even closer friendship.

Liv often wondered whether she was doing enough. Today she realized that she really wasn’t. After she got the call that Julia was in the hospital and in serious condition, she could feel her heart tighten in her chest. It ached like the time she just played an entire half against their toughest rivals back in high school and her coach refused to sub her out because she was their best player. When she got there she asked what happened, but no one would say. In the back of her mind, she already knew. The doctor finally came out, and after realizing that Liv was the only one there who cared about the outcome of his new patient, he ambled over and simply said, “Julia attempted suicide tonight. She’s stable now, but still unconscious.”

“Can I see her?!?”

He must have sensed the guilt and pain in Liv’s eyes because after a long pause he said “I don’t see what harm it could do. Go ahead.”

Walking down the hallway looking for the door with 238C on it her mind was a whirlwind of thoughts and painful and angry emotions.

“How could she do this?!?”

“Why couldn’t I help her?!?”

“Is this my fault?

“Am I a horrible friend for being angry?”

“Didn’t she know I would feel utterly guilty if she actually succeeded?!?

As she reached room 238C the final question that angrily raced through her head: “Why?!?!?”

When she walked in the room was dark. She could barely see Julia’s small frame on the hospital bed. Liv moved the oversized chair right next to the bed and sat down, looking at her friend’s face. Looking down she saw the gauze bandages on Julia’s wrists. A nurse came in and nonchalantly checked a couple of the things running directly into Julia’s body and then left just as quickly, shutting the door behind her. Liv doesn’t remember falling asleep. All she remembers is crying softly for the first time in years.

As Liv woke up, she recognized the faint light in the room as daylight and the steady pounding on the window as rain. Disoriented she realized she had left her contacts in due to the familiar dryness in her eyes. As she focused her eyes, she realized Julia was awake and had obviously been crying. Seeing how red her friend’s eyes were, she realized she had been crying hard and for a long time.

“What’s wrong? Are you alright?”

“I can’t believe you are here. Why are you here?”

“Because you are my best friend and I love you.”

The pause in the conversation seemed to go on for an eternity. She could see that Julia was trying to process what had just been said, and finally said, “I didn’t think anyone did. Thank you.”

It was in that moment that Liv realized she was the friend she thought she had been. Her mere presence, clumsily asleep in an oversized chair by Julia’s bedside, had been the one thing that had just given her friend a huge reason to live. A reason to keep trying. And Liv knew her friend well enough to know that Julia was going to try.

There’s no greater power than that.

Happy Honeydew #3

The morning after she died I ate two bowls of Raisin Bran Crunch and stared at Scott sleeping under the cherry tree in our backyard.

My dad shuffled into the kitchen around eleven, unshaved and still wearing the same pink shirt and matching tie he had worn at the hospital, her favorite.

“Is he still out there”, he grumbled as he poured himself a bowl of cereal.

I finished chewing for another ten seconds before swallowing.

“You need to talk to him”, I commented between spoonfuls.

My dad dropped the milk carton on the counter. Small droplets scattered across the tile.

“And what”, his voice rose slightly as he begun to wake up, “Ban him from being in the backyard? People cope in different ways.”

His voice broke and tempered down before he added in a whisper while staring at the floor, “Not everyone moves on quickly.”

Sometimes I wish I had looked down at my cereal, but I still think I would have heard the tiny speck of water falling from his strong chin into his bowl, disturbing a flake resting near the edge.

I got up off the stool and grabbed the half-empty cereal box on my way to the backyard door.

Under different circumstances I would have laughed at the look on my brother’s face when I nudged him awake. His eyes got wide like a child woken up on his birthday, but as he began to realize whose foot was pressing in his side his smile thinned and his eyes became narrow.

“Come on”, I said while shaking the box a foot above his head, “you need to eat.”

He stood up, the top of his head barely reaching my shoulder, grabbed the box from my hand and took several steps backwards to get the full view of the tree.

“It doesn’t work unless we both do it”, he said, still gazing at the thousands of pink blossoms sprouting from the wood, a small bran flake dangling from his lip.

“It’s not real. It’s just a fantasy that-“ I began before Scott cut me off.

“It wasn’t supposed to grow, Jason”, he interjected in the tone of a child reciting his favorite nursery rhyme, “Everyone said it wouldn’t grow, but it did. And it became our tree, and if we ever need something we can wish on it together.”

“And the wish will come true”, we said in unison.

He turned his head to look at me and I reached my hand out to ruffle his hair.

I knelt down to his level.

“Buddy, sometimes things just happen, and it seems like there’s a meaning to it but there’s not”, I explained.

He took two steps backwards, out of my grasp, and thrust the cereal box outward into my hands.

I took the box, sighed, and made my way back to the sliding door. As I put my hand on the doorknob I could see his reflection standing several inches away from the base of the tree.

“She believed in it”, he said.

I opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it without looking behind me.

***

Somehow I knew he wouldn’t give up easily. By six he was still outside. He hadn’t moved at all beyond the occasional sitting breaks to rest his feet.

As the sun began setting I went into the yard again.

“Think you’ve got it memorized by now?” I joked.

He just kept staring forward at the tree as he replied, “Only this side.”

I moved behind him and laid my hand on his shoulder.

“I know you think it works-“ I began, but for the second time he cut me off.

“It worked for you”, he said in a wobbling voice.

I took my hand off his shoulder.

“What are you talking about”, I asked in a calm voice.

“Two years ago, after your bike accident, you spent the night in the hospital”, he began, recalling a lost memory, “She dragged me and Dad away from the waiting room in the middle of the night and you survived and the worst you had was a broken arm.”

I had never realized how big of trouble I had been in until last year when my mom sat me down to explain the whole story and everything the doctors had hidden from me. Whenever I had asked them what exactly had happened all they would say was that I was very lucky.

I put both hands on his shoulders and squeezed, before taken a couple steps around to the other side of the tree.

Like he already knew what I was thinking he put his hands around the tree, reaching as far to me as he could without touching it.

I grabbed his hands, careful not to disturb the tree in the process. The sun, almost finished setting, conjured up a light breeze that stirred the branches of the tree, scattering cherry blossoms that fell to my right. I squeezed his hands, took a breath, and closed my eyes.

Cool Coconut #3

I float free under the bluish-black sky
In the empty lot next to the county fire station
Across from my grandparent’s house.
When there’s an emergency
The lights and sirens call out, strident and bright.

But tonight the only sounds are those of
Myself and my cousins, Jeret and Clay.
I’m older by two and four years, respectively.
Unlike them, however, I’m new to the scene
That plays out before us.

They circle around and scream or squeal
When they catch a little blaze of nature.
I just stand in the middle, taking in the
Beauty and temporality of the unpredictable
warm flare of neon green/yellow.

The spark is like a tiny bit of the sky
Turned tangible and intimate.
This lot is my shoebox diorama of the whole universe
When the darkness of space descends
To frame little bug-stars and child-planets.

Killer Kiwi #3

The old woman spread her brown hands before her, and a pack of gray wolves sprang forth, their claws slashing in the snow, and a hurricane roared in the curve between her thumb and forefinger, and tears ran in the canals of the lines of her palms. She tipped her face to the red Arizona moon, and her mouth opened, and out rushed the Rio Colorado, blue-green through the canyons, and out danced the long braids of the Apache nation on horseback, and out murmured the faraway drums, thundering low, drums of war, of wedding, of warning. And when she spoke her thin heart was the drum, and her steady voice the flute, and when she spoke the red rocks listened, and when the rocks themselves spoke she listened with a spirit that held all that the rocks and the rivers and the wolves had ever seen, or feared, or forgotten.

“In the end,” she said, “there is no difference between the history-keeper and the curandera who heals through sweet-smelling herbs. Between the storyteller and the shaman. There is always a wound to close. There is always a people to knit together. There is always a magic to call down.”

Pleasant Plum #3

“A Different Point of View”

I am a Geologist. I teach GEOL 100 (beginning mineralogy) and GEOL 325 (magneto-ferric mapping) at Iowa State University I also am a consultant to Shell, providing a second opinion on the viability of natural oil patches for drilling in Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa. I am a scientist. I also believe.

Did you know that if the earth was 3 ft thicker, life could not exist because the gravity would prevent cells from moving quickly enough to reproduce?

. I like the natural process of time. I’ll take my students out into the field and explain to them that the “rock” they are holding in their hands took millions of years to create.

In their world, things are defined by instances and moments, mere flashes of light. A fleeting scene that before you can define it; is gone.

Did you know that if the atmosphere wasn’t the exact balance of carbon, nitrogen hydrogen, oxygen and sulfur; life couldn’t breath?

The antiquity of the world is hard to grasp. Sometimes we have to write down the age of the earth on the chalkboard. 4.5 billion years is hard to wrap your head around. After all, it’s a heck of a lot of zeros. When seconds are an eternity, millennia don’t exist.

Did you know that charcoal is made of the same thing as diamonds?

The constant processes of the earth fascinate me. The world moves and changes in a time that is so alien to may own. Like two drummers with completely different rhythms making wild but complementary beats. It’s hard to reconcile that they have even the same units of measurement.

Did you know that our continents move 18 centimeters each year?

Geology creates things that are so fantastically beautiful. Gemstones birthed by the loving crush of the earth during a millennium. Limestone formations crafted by the tears of a cave. Ocean cliffs’ faces beaten by salty waves.

Did you know that magnetically, the North Pole is actually the South Pole?

My job is to try and explain this beauty, to grasp and understand it. Ever since the word “scientist” we have tried and failed. When we do finally understand, it is so clear and simple it has an elegant beauty.

Did you know that scientists only hypothesize how the world works, and then just get lucky?

People ask me to explain how I can hold such contradictory views.

They think that a scientist’s job is proving that “He” doesn’t exist.

I think that a scientist’s job is proving that He does.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters…..

And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold,

it was very good.”

I get to pay homage to the magic, miraculous thing that is creation.

It is very good.

Brash Blackberry #3

Tracy liked to be kissed in the rain. I had only known her for a few weeks when she told me about it. She mentioned that her old boyfriend, the first person she’d fucked, caught her lips in the rain once. And she said there had never been any kiss comparable to that one.

I knew I was treading on dangerous territory when the idea popped into my head. Trace (as she secretly liked to be called) and I were walking back to her apartment from a wonderful concert at The Blue Note. Jimmy Eat World, a band that reminded us what it was like to be in high school again, had played to a sold out audience. We were lost in a toned down wonderland, a byproduct of a concert where the speakers were too loud and the lights were too bright.

We were halfway to her place when it started to mist. It was around 80°, so we didn’t mind the cool moisture on our skin. Tracy smiled like she had some sort of narcotic in her system and all we could do is laugh. I realized at this point that this was the perfect moment for our first real kiss.

We’d kissed a year before in her dorm room. She told me that kiss meant nothing to her, that it had no magic. Those weren’t her exact words, but that’s what I took it as. And from that moment on, I hadn’t pursued her. We’d been friends and kept it that way.

That is, until this night. We were getting close to her apartment and my heart pounded heavily, so loud I thought she could hear it. The rain started pouring hard and her thin black hair started to soak. We walked slowly to the entrance of her apartment building.

The idea came out of my mouth almost as fast as I’d thought it up. “We should kiss,” I said in a quiet tone. Tracy looked at me strangely for a minute. She could have been thinking a number of things – that kiss she talked about in the rain, the first time we kissed, our hands edging toward one another at the concert.

She grinned and suddenly, she came toward me. We kissed. There was a passionate, fierce connection between us, and this time it was magical. The rain poured over our faces and entered our mouths. The kiss was more wet than any I had experienced before, and she kissed me like no other girl had. Maybe it was the rain. Maybe it was my lack of experience kissing pretty girls. Maybe it was a little bit of both.

When we were done, we looked at one another silently. She gave me a tight hug and I knew our night had come to a close. She smiled as if she had won a large pink bear at a carnival and walked into her building.

As I started back to my place, I looked into the cloudy sky and embraced the rain around me. The rain might have been a little cold, but my heart was on fire.

You know, there’s magic in kisses. But not of all of them.

Alluring Apricot #3

God favored licorice
And watermelon snow cones
So he ate all of it
And left the ice storms
For us to follow
The led of melted stickiness
Like kids whose fingers
Still revel in the
Memories of something sweet
In anticipation of something bigger.

I had only the leftovers of
Nostalgia to keep me fat
Of more lasting kisses to be had
More hurt to be shown
More ice cream to melt
Out of my hands
That stayed as a recollection
Of
That one time
When we
Looked for gold compasses in backyards
And wouldnt go outside
Without our superman t-shirt on
Because wed never stop trying to fly

Our bruises wouldnt keep us from defying gravity.

Of wanting to know things that
Those people
The Adults never understand
So we made up languages
And laughed with the god contained in us
As we kept asking
Why there is never enough ice cram in the
World to keep us satisfied

Wed be like sailors
Like Pip and Billy Bud
Wed sail out to wonderland

We had our butterflies in our
Stomachs to keep us floating on
Gradually coming in to eat
And looking down the stares of those people
You know
the Adults
That could never understand our logic
And the stories wed tell

How we made mud pies so good that it made
The most beautiful flowers youd ever seen
How we had secret recipes for making boxcars
That flew

No really
I swear it did

How I got lost and ran into other dimension

On Cortez street
And brought oranges
As proof
And ran along side
Stranger who ran at my same pace.

I miss running
Like how we use to
So fast and hungrily
That we were afraid wed miss our chance

Of knowing something.

But THEY got to us
Made us question ourselves
So much so
That we lost our butterflies

And soon

We
Forgot our
Secret recipes
For making things

And then
Our language
Became lost
And we forgot how
To speak


But I somehow remember
The ice cream storms
And talking to god
When flying off ledges
And having our bruises as proof
Of what weve seen

I can still remember
How it felt to have butterflies.

G1 Removal, TKO #2

The following players are removed automatically as a result of their inactivity:

Creative Crabapple
Perky Pineapple
Newbie Nectarine

TKO Question #3 for Group 1

TKO Question #3: [Fiction]

The gift of mana (power, spiritual essence) is all of ours, and we can command this mana. You generate mana through prayer, through deep breathing and through meditation.

-- Lanakila Brandt

Write a scene that includes something magical (define as mana or as you will).

**

Responses

Responses marked with an asterick were the most popular responses to this TKO.

Lively Lime
Lucky Lemon
* Gutsy Guava
Precious Pear
* Pleasant Plum
* Brash Blackberry
* Killer Kiwi
Alluring Apricot
* Happy Honeydew
* Mad Mandarine
* Strange Strawberry

Players Removed as a Result of This Vote

Cool Coconut
Odd Orange
Wacky Watermelon

Gnarly Grape #2

My coming of age moment was not a certain age, nor a certain achievement. I realized that I was no longer a child when I learned to game the system and delve into obscure rules and technicalities.

In 6th grade, I was naïve and decided to take Drama. In this class, to my horror, I soon found out that 30% of the grade would be decided based upon a name test. Many in the class were ecstatic at what was meant to be a grade inflator. I was terrified, since I am truly abysmal at names, and angered, since this test had nothing to do with drama.

A child would whine and complain to the teacher. But at this time, I decided to get complex. I would whine and complain using specific citations and protocol. Boo yah! (What, you think I’d try to remember the names of the 30 people in the class that I only see once a day? Get real.)

I plunged into the highly detailed rule book. This rule book was given to everybody, and we were told to read it carefully, since we would be strictly held by its tenants. Reading it for the first time, I searched and searched until I found a passage laying out a multi-tiered appeal process for any dispute with a teacher. I was armed and ready to go.

Waiting until the end of class, I went up to the teacher and relayed my concerns about the upcoming test. As expected, I was blown off, with the teacher shocked that I would care be so concerned about the “obvious” grade inflator.

“Okay. I would like to make a Level 2 Appeal concerning this test.” I replied, using the procedure laid out in the book.

The teacher was stunned and confused. She has never heard of this before and accused me of playing games. I then whipped out my rule book that I was carrying just in case and showed the procedure I was using. Eventually, I got out of the test.

I had escaped certain failure because I knew this “mightily important rule book” more than the faculty.

My lawyer parents would be so proud.

Rare Raspberry #2

Lesbian Lunch

I didn’t fit in at school. I went to a private Christain academy and even though we had school uniforms I was still noticeably different. My mom told me that I was there because of the grace of God, but what ever the reason, it definitely wasn’t because my family was rich. I had earned a scholarship and my mom drove the school bus in the mornings to help cover the cost of uniforms and fees. What the scholarship didn’t cover was a coat that fit me to wear in the winter time or more than one pair of school shoes. Maybe I was there by the grace of God, but in third grade God’s grace doesn’t make up for classmates teasing.

Lunch time was the worst. All of my classmates would pull out crisp, clean, brown paper lunch sacs full of white bread sandwiches and little bags of cheetos. I on the other hand brought the same tin lunch pail I’d been using since the 1st grade. My sandwiches weren’t on white bread and my lunches didn’t include a baggie of Oreos. Most of the time I would try to hide the contents of my meal behind my freckled folded arms, but everyone knew – my food was gross.

Lunches became a battle at home. I begged my mom to buy me Capri suns or at least to start using paper lunch sacs. She just sighed for a long time and said, “I’m sorry honey, I know it’s hard. I just wish you knew how lucky you are.”

I didn’t feel lucky, I felt like a loser.

One day I forgot to bring my lunch to school. Miss Nutall my adoring teacher asked everyone in the class to share a little with me so I wouldn’t have to go hungry. In a matter of minutes the paper towel spread across my desk held a feast. I got 3 sections of an orange, half of a peanut butter and raspberry jelly sandwich, a chocolate snack pak and a handful of cheddar gold fish. I was in processed food heaven. Over the next two weeks I “forgot” my lunch 5 times.

Of course Miss Nutall caught on. One morning she corned me in the cloak room and asked, “are you sure you forgot your lunch again? Why don’t I just call you mom and ask her to bring you one.”

I’d been caught. I can still vividly remember the cramping of my gut. My eyes dropped to the floor and my heart sank even lower. “Uhhh she’s at her other work,” I said. “So she can’t, but that’s okay, maybe it’s at the bottom of my backpack and I just didn’t see it.”

Lunch time came and I dragged my feet to the cloak room. My tin lunch pail honestly felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. I was about to sink into the pit of despair when Miss Nutall stopped by my desk. Taking a peek under the lid she exclaimed, “Ooooh tuna fish, my favorite. Any chance you want to trade?” In her hand she held a brown paper bag, swinging is gently from side to side. I looked at her with hopefully eyes, “for reals??”

Miss Nutall traded lunches with me every day that week. After that she just started to write my name on the bags. She even replaced the dots over the i’s with mini hearts. For 30 blissful minutes a day, I finally got to fit in.

Half way through the school year Miss Nutall disappeared. She was replaced by the terrible Mr. Preves, who didn’t want to trade me lunches and definitely didn’t write my name with tiny hearts over the i’s.

The rumors circling around the school about Miss Nutall were vicious. When I finally asked my mom about it she gingerly tried to explain that Miss Nutall made decisions that my Christian private school didn’t agree with. Instead of getting married Miss Nutall lived with another woman.

At the time I didn’t know exactly what she meant. But even as an 8 year old I didn’t get what the big deal was. A sob started rising in my chest, “that’s just not fair” and the tears began to fall.



In that moment I grew up. I learned the all important lesson that life isn’t fair and that sometimes eating saltine crackers from a beat up tin lunch box isn’t the worst thing that can happen.

Alert Apple #2

Cranberry stain: $25
Lamp shade: $10

Its the all-American thing, right? A nice little book, painstakingly compiled to catalogue the lifetime achievements of a child. You know, Little League pictures, ticket stubs to the recital (the only reason they sell tickets to those is to generate stubs), the mandatory nudie shot during a diaper change at six months.

Yeah. This book was different.

Cat peed on rug: $35
Torn Toughskins: $20

I had my own business at 14, mowing lawns for the cabin weekenders on the lake. For $5 a week, they didn't have to spend a precious Saturday afternoon doing at the cabin what they paid their own kids $10 a week to do at home in the suburbs. Ten of those a week -- cha-ching, $50.

'Course its not like I ever saw any of it.

Bike tire: $30
Bunk bed rail: $18

It's really wierd to have to pay for your own toys. Well, not on the front end, but on the back, after the Christmas presents gets busted, you get charged for the replacement cost, lest Gramma be hurt by the knowledge of how careless you were.

Christmas morning was like a business venture. New assets were potential liabilities.


At six years old, my net worth was negative $54. Its a pretty exact figure, but easy to remember from the book. Income was carefully accounted by the auditing firm of M-O-M, Incorporated. Ten percent for tithing and then the remainder carefully deducted from the never-ending list of costly mishaps and malfeseances that always seemed to gradually grow, no matter how many lawns I mowed or how much cash came in quickly-forgotten cards on birthdays.

For a while, we even had our own household currency. Cheap plastic poker chips carried monetary value for complete chores, though they were quickly traded in to feed the insatiable appetite of the book. At 18, the bills changed, but the process remained the same. Electric, cable, heat, car -- they ate up a paltry biweekly check just like the debt book consumed the poker chips.

They say that debt is the universal experience of adulthood in the modern consumer economy.

I don't think I ever was a child.

Naive Noni #2

"Lord knows I've never been through Marine Boot Camp - hell, I can hardly watch war movies because even the fake killing disturbs me - but I couldn't help but think that I had somehow gotten myself into some weird sort of hoo-ahh situation: paddling my rickety ass canoe directly into an oncoming thunderstorm in an attempt to make it to our next camp in a quickly darkening wilderness. The wet stuff numbing my face could hardly be called rain anymore. It had combined with the lake and the wind to create some extra-natural force; pushing us back from the land we desperately needed to reach before nightfall.

It was unbelievable. Just an hour earlier it had been a pristine day; well over half way into our Boy Scout 'vacation' to the Boundary Waters Wilderness Canoe Area. Somewhere between Minnesota and Canada our group of amateur rowers had found a gorgeous island in the middle of the largest lake we'd yet seen. Josh and I had chosen to go with the younger group, boys that were hardly even teenagers, so we could enjoy a more leisurely pace and spend whole days fishing. We thought we had found the perfect place for just that. And then the rain started to fall.

It only sprinkled at first, but the thick drops and dark clouds in the near distance clued us in to nature's true intentions. Josh immediately realized we'd be in trouble if we didn't get off the island ASAP. We were two hours away from dusk; closer with the storm roaring in overhead. If we didn't try to beat the rain we'd be stranded on the island for the night. That would put us half a day behind schedule and throw our last two days completely off. We'd run out of food and miss our rendezvous back to civilization.

Josh sprinted through the thick, mossy forest that carpeted all but the edges of the island, trying to corral the younger scouts who had scattered to do God knows what. Luckily, each boy was quickly accounted for. Despite their lack of maturity, but more importantly thanks to Josh’s leadership, everyone hurriedly disembarked from the small cove where our canoes were docked.

Before we knew it we were in the middle of a dark lake in the Minnesota Wilderness when the heavy sprinkles turned into heavy rain and the once fun trip became deadly serious. Josh was in the back of my canoe desperately reading the map, frantically trying to find the cleared camp ground we had to reach at the other end of the lake.

‘Just head 10 degrees to your right and we should hit the site!’ he yelled over the wind and rain.

I was afraid Josh and I wouldn’t make it. Josh was afraid that the younger scouts wouldn’t make it. He called out to me again, this time to tell me that we had to circle around to the three canoes behind us to show the younger scouts exactly where we were headed. I was as confused as I was annoyed. We were always the lead canoe and the others had just followed us. As we struggled back to each canoe I realized Josh wasn’t showing them where we were headed as much as he was reassuring each boy that we’d make it and everything would be just fine if they just hung in there and trusted him. Boys that were close to tears when we got to them were left with a smile of determination as we moved on to the next one.

My arms were burning by the time we had circled back to the front of our pathetic armada. The shore-line we were aiming at was a sliver in the distance; a grey line below patches of evergreen. Stroke after painful stroke without a hint of progress finally yielded to hope. Somehow the constant rain, wind, and paddling morphed into a timeless, mindless action. We reached the shore after an hour on the lake.

Exhausted, our struggle was far from over. In the now pitch dark we had to set up camp before we could finally rest. Josh struggled with the younger boys in the group to drag their canoes on-shore. One by one he made sure each boy had their tents put up before he even thought of erecting his own. I tried to help, but I had never really gotten the hang of it the whole trip and the near impossible conditions weren’t making it any easier. Finally, everyone was safely zipped up in their sleeping bags and was asleep before Josh and I had even finished staking our tent pegs in the drenched soil.

Wet, cold, and exhausted, Josh and I slid into our sleeping bags, our minds trying to wrap around exactly what we had just put ourselves through. I looked over at Josh, and right before falling asleep said,

'Son, you really grew up today, I'm proud of you.'

Classy Cherry #2

I’m still a child.

When I am lost,
so small, and alone,
I squeeze my eyes shut
and wish for my momma,
ache for her voice and hand
to find me and take me home.

When I’m in a store
I walk the toys’ aisle
to look at the new dolls
with pretty dresses and perfect faces
and touch their realistic bodies
to imagine the babe was mine.

When I eat vanilla pudding
cold in Snack pack plastics
I swallow it in giant spoonfuls
and let the smooth sweetness
roll around my tongue and
ring below my lip.

When I’ve been awake too long
my eyes tearing up
and my limbs heavy
with head pounding
all I want to do is cry
so somebody tucks me in.

When I’m sad
all I want is for you to
run your fingers
through the blonde hairs
curling around my ears
and pat my back, "it's okay."

I hope I never grow old.

I don’t ever want to wear granny panties
I don't want to become conservative with age
"when I see reason,"
I don't want to ever stop believing in magic
I don’t ever want to wear panty hose with tennis shoes
I don't want to be afraid of technology.

I want to stay a child.