The Right Hand

When I looked down I saw that my knuckles were smashed in from the force of my punch. Conventionally, it may not be the greatest knockout story in history, but I still felt like a hero. I've been in a fight or three in my younger years, but I try to think of myself as a peaceful person. To this day, I can say that I'm proud of how my hand was broken.

Daydreams

I rarely have vivid dreams, but when I do they are most interesting when I'm still awake. I have a tendency to zone out very deeply when my brain is bored. In school situations, and certainly never Professor Benton's Advanced Essay Writing class, in a moment of downtime I can have intense daydreams. I've kept a small mental journal of these imaginings for my readers' pleasure.

Insant Death

There's nothing I despise more than a fatal freefall to earth. I hate it so much that I avoid high ledges at any opportunity. When I watch a movie with people crawling up a mountain or a tower, even a rooftop, I avoid it to protect the improbable disaster of my body being sucked into the television like Carol Anne Freeling in Poltergeist. Height is my truest fear.

Semantics of Romantics

My high school classmates were never particularily troublesome, and in fact in my 13 years at the district I was spoiled with how smooth and peaceful the days went. None of us had died, gone to prison, or diagnosed as unstable. Aside from a few dozens of unexpected pregnancies we were all great kids. I always felt like I was the one struggling to impress. Looking back from here, I feel like I'm the only one who went in a straight line.

The Courtesy of Crashing

We arrive at the four-way-stop. Each of us assess the vehicular situation by looking at all sides. After a quick glance around the area before and after stopping behind the white line, you know which order the cars will accellerate in. Excited, you go second, after the white van to the right who was here before you even arrived. The other cars have only just arrived. You creep forward while keeping an eye on the blue car to the left. "ah, an understanding, I can go." You speed forward a few feet and around that time the blue car decides that it's hammertime and that his turn must take place while your car is in front of his.

Drawing Out My Failures

After a previous attempt, which I discovered I failed at failing, I've recently tried to confront everything I've ever failed at in my life. To my surprise I've had an overflow of success. Not in my present state, but during my earlier years. Growing up I was a messy painting of a child.

As I've said before, mistakes are important because you can always use your failed situation as an outline of a successful situation. With this in mind, a true failure can only be something you're null to grasping. When my list narrowed down, I discovered that I sucked the miserable heart out of art. The art of creative drawing, to be exact.

There are pre-1990's Disney cartoons with exquisitely detailed and lovable characters redrawn in hundreds of thousands of frames to create a beautiful hour and a half-story. While I grew up watching these wonderful movies, I could not draw a perfect circle. My rendition of Simba from The Lion King looked like an angry, tumorous cloud with chicken legs.

I didn't give up easily. I could master coloring in the lines with crayon, so surely I could master a damned lion drawing, or at least the soul of a drawing. My hands were talented in other areas. I learned how to give massages, to drive a 3000+ pound vehicle, and even to type at 250 words per minute; they had the dexterity to lift weights and pull my body up a rock wall. But, when a pencil is gripped between my fingers and it touches the paper my hands refuse to share their skill with the lead.

During junior year of college I bought myself a dry-erase board. My roommate and I would share it for grocery lists and silly drawings. "This is it," I thought with courage. Little did I know that my cursed hands were still art-retarded from wrist to fingertip. When I went to draw hilarious pictures of genitals to surprise and potentially embarrass my roommate I was left with a worthless and unfunny picture and a wounded pride.

Being an English major I'll hopefully never have to worry about my failure. I'll keep it a secret like an artist's bad drawing. Besides, bad drawings can be just as unintentionally funny as ones with artistic souls.