rissy stories

Hey guys,

Here’s another creative nonfiction story-time-type of story that I wrote in undergrad. It’s a story from a really long time ago, so I may not have all of the facts right, but this is the best to my memory.

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Competition at its Finest

“I bet I can throw harder than you can.”

I look over at my black-haired, brown eyed friend at this and raise a light blonde eyebrow. I cross a pale, stick of a leg over the other and lean back on my hands, the gravel on the asphalt digging further into my small palms. The sun’s beaming on this bright, New Jersey summer day and sitting at the bottom of his driveway isn’t exactly helping.

We’re clearly bored, and Amanda (his older sister – my best friend) wouldn’t be home from Girl Scouts for another few hours. She usually has ideas and we’ve already gone over all the basics. We don’t want to ride our bicycles, Redentor doesn’t like to draw chalk on the driveway, and it’s too hot to play tag. We could go inside one of our houses, but that’s no fun when it’s so nice outside. If Amanda was here, she’d have a better idea of what to do.

(Irony at its finest.)

While thinking, we’re staring at this big pile of stones sitting in front the pale-yellow garage, on the other side of his mom’s red mini-van. I’m not quite sure why they’re there, but I think Redentor said something about his parents putting them around the trees in his yard? I don’t know. They’re large stones, about the size of baseballs, so I see what he’s getting at.

“You know I play ball right?” I ask, warning him of my cool skills as an eight-year-old.

“So what? That doesn’t mean you’re stronger than me!” he claims. I roll my eyes at his nonsense, looking to my left at my grey house right next door, making sure that no adults are around to yell at us before I actually challenge him to a bet.

Our dads are at work and our moms are inside our houses, probably starting dinner, which means we still have about an hour to kill before they come looking for us. So… why not? Redentor always likes to push my buttons, and if you think I’m about to sit there and take it, then you’re wrong. So wrong. I am the stronger specimen.

“Wanna bet?” I ask. He sports a big goofy, “you’re-so-on” grin while jumping up and running towards the rock pile sitting up against the garage. I stand up and take a second to brush off the pebbles sticking to the back of my thighs. I then wipe at any dirt that may be staining the back of my jean shorts and I walk after to him as he leans over and picks up a warm rock that’s slightly bigger than his hand.

He then turns around and forcibly shuts one eye while sticking his tongue out of his mouth – his concentration/aiming face – while throwing his puny arm back and launching this rock high into the air with a loud grunt. It’s a pathetic rainbow throw, and the rock lands with a loud smack at the end of the driveway, near the sidewalk. I laugh, place a hand on my forehead, like I’m saluting the rock and shielding the sun from my eyes. I scrunch my nose and squint my eyes, peering towards the end of the driveway.

“Whoa, you really let go on that one,” I say nasally. He punches my other arm without warning while I’m not looking and I yell, “Hey!” turning to him and punching his arm harder.

“Like you can do better,” he says while flinching, leaning back over into the pile, and picking up an even bigger rock. He slaps it into my right hand, and I don’t hesitate to hold my left arm out in front of me. I swing my right arm back, then twist my body the opposite way to propel my right arm forward. I throw a line drive towards the end of the driveway – and yes it is a line drive, don’t make that face at me. My rock knocks his rock out of the way, and then I smile, placing my hands on my hips.

“See?” I ask. From that moment on, it becomes a full-fledged war. We’re now throwing every single rock from that large pile down the driveway. The competition clearly turns from: “Who can throw the hardest?” to “How many can you throw down the driveway at once?” There’s at least fifty of these suckers and only a few of them actually make it to the sidewalk. Once they’re all at the end of the driveway, we decide that we now have to throw them all back up the driveway. So, we walk to the end of the driveway, panting and sweating, not even paying attention to the car on our right as we recuperate.

“I bet you can’t throw like this,” Redentor says as he picks up another rock and chucks it towards the garage. It hits the ground and slides up against the garage door – his arm is clearly warmed up now and his throws are getting a little too good. So, I pick up another rock and aim it towards his, preparing myself to give him the schooling of his life.

“Watch and learn,” I say, throwing as hard as I can towards his rock. However, this time around, I twist my body a little too much. The trajectory of my throw is way off, so instead of aiming at the pile… the rock flies towards his mother’s mini-van. Time slows down drastically as my eyes widen at the fat rock colliding with the van’s passenger-side mirror. All of the blood completely drains out of my body as the mirror shatters along with my will to live, and tiny pieces of glass litter the asphalt directly beneath it.

I die a second time as I apparently threw the rock hard enough to make the side mirror fall off of the car completely. I cringe as it crashes to the ground alongside the glass, and I gulp, hearing my friend gasp beside me. Once it’s all said and done, I turn to him with my hands covering my mouth. He’s gripping his hair and stuttering, his brown eyes filling up with tears.

“M-MARISSA, W-WHAT DID YOU DO!?!?!?!” he screams like a little girl, running towards the car. I push my bleach-blonde hair back behind my ears and wipe off sweat from underneath my bangs. I’m breathing heavy, looking all around me to make sure than no one saw what just happened. I walk up behind him and examine the damage while he’s blubbers and cries. I just stare in shock and place a comforting hand on his shoulder that he quickly pulls away from. I then say the most moronic thing I have ever said in my entire life.

“Maybe she won’t notice?” He scream-cries in response and I flinch, slowly backing away from him. I only have two options now – pack my bags, sprint to the nearest bus stop, and run away from home forever… or die by the hands of our parents. Either way, I’m screwed.

“I have to tell her!” Redentor yells, tears and snot streaming down his brown skin as he stumbles towards his house. My heart seizes and I loudly whisper after him:

“No, shut up! Redentor – get back here!” I don’t know what whispering would accomplish since he’s already screaming loud enough for people in China to hear, but I’m clearly still in denial, so cut me a break.

“I have to tell her, I have to tell her, I have to tell her, I’m so sorry, I have to tell her,” he repeats until he’s swinging open his screen door and barreling into his house. I can hear him crying: “Mom, mom, I’m so sorry!” from inside the house and my eyes are as wide as they can possibly be. My hands clench into fists and I shake in my sneakers as I try to think of what to do. At the age of eight, I rarely ever curse, but I just couldn’t help it this time.

“Shit, crap, shit,” I mutter as I sprint out of his front yard, across the lawn, and back into mine.

I look around rapidly for places to hide, and I eventually decide on a large bush next to the front door steps since Redentor’s cries from inside the house are becoming clearer and clearer. I step into the garden and dive behind the bush as Redentor enters his front yard again. I peer through the pines to also see his mother, Renee, strutting towards the car with her blubbering, seven-year-old son in tow.

“Jesus, what the hell, Redentor!? What happened?” she screams angrily. He explains everything in a slobbery/sobbing manner while my heart beats too fast for my small body. I’m too terrified to plot my revenge on Redentor for ratting me out – the boy is obviously never as tough as he thinks he is – but who cares, now?

When they both turn their backs to me, I sprint out of the bush and around my house, heading towards the backyard. Once I make it without being seen, I slip into my house through the sliding glass door while panting loudly. I sit down at the kitchen table next to the door as my red-haired mother turns around from the stove.

“Where’ve you been?” she asks harmlessly. I run my fingers through my hair and glance over at the TV in the living room.

“Over at Redentor’s,” I reply as calmly as possible, not able to make eye contact with her. Obviously she hasn’t heard the screaming going on outside.

“What do you want for dinner? I’m thinking of making spaghetti,” she asks, turning back towards the stove. I swallow and fold my hands together on the pink table cloth.

“That’s fine,” I say. I see her nod out of the corner of my eye and she leans down to open a few cabinets at her feet. I hear the rustling of pots and pans as I stare ahead of me, into the hallway that leads to the foyer. My black and white cat is sitting in front of the front door, staring me down with his blue eyes. It’s almost like he knows exactly what I did and is now looking upon me with judgment. “I’m so sorry, Maxie,” I think to myself.

I begin contemplating what to tell my mother, because I know I won’t be able to hide this from her for much longer. I would be lucky if Renee isn’t already storming towards our front door as we speak.

“Um… mom, you know, um… you know Mrs. Jimenez’s car?” I ask. My mom turns back around and looks at me through her round, brown-rimmed glasses with furrowed eyebrows. I glance over at her.

“Yeah?” she asks, sounding confused. I chew on my lower lip and tap my foot on the hardwood floor.

“I, um… I saw that the side mirror’s broken,” I say, scratching the back of my head. There’s an awkward pause and my armpits begin to sweat.

“How’d that happen?” my mother asks.

“Don’t know,” I say. That’s when I hear a knock at our front door from the foyer.

xxx

We were such stupid kids.

It turns out that Renee never made my mother pay for the damage that I caused her car since Amanda made a big, white scratch on my mother’s blue minivan with her pink bike handle a few weeks before that event occurred. In Renee’s words: “We were even.” Redentor and I learned from our mistake and never did that again. I was still grounded for about a week, but now I look back on that story and ponder on how competition can be so addictive that it blinds us from the important things in life.

I developed into an overly competitive child as a student, a softball player, and a dancer with a next-door neighbor who was constantly arguing that he was better than me. As I grew older, and especially into high school, I slowly began to realize that consistently trying to prove myself to my family, friends, classmates, and teammates was making me less and less happy. I became more of an angry and guilty human being if anything else, blaming everyone around me for the person I had become, and this event was only the beginning.

It wasn’t until undergrad that I finally didn’t feel the need to prove myself to anyone anymore. I still struggle with it from time and time, but for the most part, I don’t need to throw a large rock through a car window to prove to anyone that I’m a strong person. I don’t feel the need to apologize to anyone for the decisions I’ve made. And I especially don’t need to take the bait whenever someone challenges me to a battle in which no one wins.

I can just be myself and know that I’m enough.