The Road
Less Traveled
I was
bored. Like, watching paint dry for fun bored. My friend Nate and I couldn’t
think of anything to do. We had already done all the things we wanted to do
during summer, so what else was there to do? I looked at my bro, and he said,
“I got a case of the munchies.” The only food available in his house was soup
and various spice packets in the pantry. We would have to leave home in order
to get some good grub. A steamy McChicken and a pop would go down smooth. He
lived about a five minutes away from McDonalds. That was if you drove there. We
made up our minds. But walking there would take too long. Neither of us could
drive. All of his bikes were broken or deflated. Hmm… Scooters! It would take
us awhile to get there but it sure beat walking. I’d later regret that choice.
After
a fulfilling meal at Ronald’s we mounted up for the journey home. I tossed the
last greasy wrapper in the trash and wheeled out of the lot. After a mild scoot
down the path home, we arrived at a fork in the road. The quick way home was a
monster hill past Manor House and Cottel Park. This was proverbial nightmare
for a scootsman like myself. I stared down the valley of despair, thinking nah.
I will just take the easy way home. My bro, undeterred by the hill, said “I’m
going down.” He was an experienced veteran at scooting. I was a rookie. I was
thinking of the possible ways I could die on that hill. Fall and die, crash and
die, get hit by a car and die…. Why was I considering this?! I spotted a
raccoon on the side of the road that had lost his life making the valiant
effort to cross the road. I didn’t want to end up like that! I was thin enough
as it was! Just as I was about to back out, I saw Nate at the base of the hill
screaming for me to come down. I had to. I put my foot on the metal and slid
down the mountain.
It
felt like I was floating. Like an out-of-body experience where I was watching
myself scoot to my death. I was actually doing okay. I was gonna make it. This
was a story I would tell to my grandkids and then have them put me in a nursing
home because they would think I am crazy. I picked up speed, the wind in my
face and sun to my back. I was gliding! I was wobbling! I was falling! They
never fixed the pothole. That was the beginning of the end for me. I was a ball
of steel and man, tumbling down a concrete hill like a snowball. I hit hard and
stuck to the ground. My beautiful face, thank goodness, was unharmed. My scooter
was a little bent. My pride…. punctured. Punctured like my leg! I looked down
at my leg in a daze. I saw bone. I knew I was in for it when I saw bone. No
blood yet, no pain yet, but plenty of pink flesh and panic. It was nasty. I
looked up to see my bro at my side. His face was shocked. I looked down at the
road and a foot from my hand was the dead raccoon. I didn’t even care. “Well
buddy, you and I gave it our best shot,” I said to the pancaked raccoon.
The walk
home was awful. I had a migraine and a bad one at that. My leg had started to
bleed. It was a waterfall of blood. I will not share all the gruesome details
of the wound with you. I will assume you don’t want to hear about how deep it
was or how long. Or what the inside of my leg looked like or that my bone was
chipped. (Whoops! Sorry, for telling you that.) Anyway, I couldn’t walk any
further. We made it to the entrance of the neighborhood and he phoned his mom
to come pick us up. After some application of home medicine and a painful
dousing of my wound in hydrogen peroxide, we sought professional help. Long
story short I spent most of my night in the emergency room get x-rays and
stitches. I got my cherry lollipop and bailed. I fell asleep when I got home. I
guess the best lesson to take away from this is either you’d better be as good
as your friend at scootering, or the road less traveled can sometimes be the
right choice. It might take five minutes longer but at
least it’s not littered with raccoon carcasses and it won’t cost you a chunk of
your leg. That is unless you’re up to
the challenge and have good health insurance.
What I think I did well on this article was use creative detail. That being said I think I also left a lot to the imagination. While I added good detail, I also created chances for the reader to imagine pieces of the story for themselves.
What I think I did well on this article was use creative detail. That being said I think I also left a lot to the imagination. While I added good detail, I also created chances for the reader to imagine pieces of the story for themselves.
