You see, they wouldn’t listen. And now I’m sure they regret it. It can’t be fun to see your son living in squalor. Especially when you’re subsidizing it.
Normally when my parents came for a college visit, we’d meet at a restaurant. But this time my dad called from the car, “We’ll just come by and get you.” This was an unprecedented maneuver for which I was wholly unprepared. My objections, thinly disguised as concern for their convenience, went unheeded.
I had ten minutes.
Cleaning was not an option. Even given a week’s notice, cleaning was not an option. To be honest, cleaning was probably not an option until permits from Greenpeace were secured. I think the mushrooms growing from the beer spill were a protected ecosystem.
Then I remembered the stairs. Our landlord had removed them after a step collapsed. The removal came with empty promises of immediate replacement. In the meantime, we had a ladder. Usually. Occasionally our neighbors would steal the ladder. I eagerly checked. This was not my lucky day, the ladder was intact. Before I had time to hide it -- leaving me with the simple task of being incredulous about my landlord’s irresponsibility – my parents arrived. Incredulity was still eminent, just not mine.
Climbing a ladder up to your son’s apartment, for which you are paying rent, only to be greeted by fungus patches, has got to bring up a lot of doubts about your success as a parent.
I tried to protect them but, you see, they wouldn’t listen.
Second Place Entry:
Mistaken Identity
by Katie Vorreiter
Katie Vorreiter lives in San Jose California with her husband Loren and two children. She juggles running her own small business with running her household and running full-time after her young kids. Her lifetime desire to write for publication remains unquenched, and it seems will no longer be ignored. More anciently than she’d like to admit, Katie earned a B.A. in English and Spanish at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and an M.B.A. in International Management at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
You see, they wouldn’t listen. And now here I am performing open-heart surgery in a hut thatched with Amazonian foliage. It’s terribly difficult to impress upon preliterate people the difference between a PhD in geo-environmental engineering and a medical degree. Throw in a language barrier and we’ve got a colossal misunderstanding.
Moments after our feet hit the rutted clay of our runway, my translating pilot presented me as “Doctor.” Thus, before my perspiration had saturated my bra, I was escorted – that is to say, all but borne aloft – by a tide of nearly naked people I’d only just met. We arrived at the hut wherein lay, bleeding, my predicament.
To be sure, “open-heart surgery” is a bit of an exaggeration: as is “runway” and “antiperspirant protection.” Nonetheless, I am unschooled in removing what appears to be a barbed fishing instrument protruding from a man’s chest.
I gesticulate for my bags. Digging, pawing, flinging, I seek out antibacterial wipes, sewing kit and butane lighter. Cleaning my hands with wipes seems a fastidious gesture while my sweat drips into the man’s chest wound, but I feel the need for some sort of protocol. I gently ease out the spar, and from my hours of watching televised medical dramas, I can tell that it hasn’t penetrated organs. Holding needle to flame, I wish I could heal as easily as I can flick forth fire.
After my stitching and the tribal shaman’s healing herbal bath, my patient sleeps, and I creep into the bushes to vomit in solitude.
Third Place Entry:
The Sacrifice
by Nik Walton
Nik Walton is sixteen years old and attends Boise High School as a sophomore. He has just really gotten into writing in the past two years. Aside from writing, he plays cello and hockey.
You see, they wouldn’t listen. And now I was stuck there, on the street corner, with a guitar. I told them I wasn’t good at playing. I said no one would give me money. There had to be an easier way to raise skiing dough. I knew four chords, and that was it. So, I positioned my fingers and strummed. People walked by and laughed.
“Oh, c’mon!” I yelled. It didn’t help.
I hadn’t asked for this. Why me? I think somewhere in there I hit a few right chords and drew some surprised looks. So being the quick thinker I was, I decided that the best way to make things better was to sing. Wrong decision. My words got lost in the tangled laughs around me.
And then some Chinese guy walked up behind me. “Here,” he said. “Like this.” And he took hold of the guitar and strummed the poor thing for all it was worth. And that’s how life goes. You get stuck doing something you don’t want to do, you suck at doing it, and you get schooled by a Chinese guy. Well…that’s life.
My theory on how to deal with that is just keep on going and do what you want. So I did.
“Give me that!” I yanked the guitar away from the guy and played my mournful tune. I used my great ad-libbing skills to make a song and sang. I got three dollars that day—two dollars of it was from my mom for lunch.
