My regular 12th grade English classes are working on creative writing projects on a hero or a villain. They had to write a 5 page story with plot, voice, dialogue...the whole shebang. I told my students I would do it with them just to show that it could be done and that I wasn't trying to torture them. SO, for a good laugh, read the story below. I copied and pasted it from Word so it came out a little weird but you get the point. I read it to them in class yesterday and there were mixed emotions expressed, but I think they all secretly like it...at least that's what I tell myself.
Basketball IS a Superpower by Jessica Dixon
I dribbled a basketball on my bedroom carpet until its rhythm “BOOM BOOM BOOM” pounded away the burden of my secret…or at least it did until my Mom screeched at me:
“Eve, have you gone crazy?”
“Ugh!” I took aim at my Beyonce poster, and threw the ball; it hit the wall hard, spun up at a sharp angle, hit my ceiling fan, ricocheted to turn off my light switch and landed softly on my bedspread by my hand.
A girl can’t even play a little basketball in her own house without being accused of doing something wrong. Maybe I am going crazy; maybe I do have a few misplaced molecules, or atoms, or whatever it is a person is made up of. BUT, I’m a good ball player, I’m a nice girl, I’m a…decent student, and I could have been content living my own life just being those things if I had wanted. Instead, I’m lying here wondering why my “helpful” acts are the reason my mind is guilty and there may or may not be an innocent man in jail. Like my mom said, my name is Eve; and two weeks ago, I didn’t feel quite so crazy. Let me explain…
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… I’ve been the point guard of every basketball team I’ve ever been a part of since Junior Dribblers in the first grade. I still remember the tragedy of my first competitive game. My five year old brain thought it was a good idea to attempt an under-the-leg pass…actually, not a good idea at that stage of my skills. Snobby Angela on the other team stole the ball and made the winning shot. Silly, I know, but since then my basketball handling skills have been impeccable because my humiliation forced me to practice…hourly. This year, I’m a senior at Denver West High School and the girls’ basketball team won state last year off my assists. I say assists because the point guard doesn’t shoot; they get the ball where it needs to be at the right moment…but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t have made the shots. Anyway, I love to listen to my little brother relay the plays of my games to my relatives. In his loveable but obnoxious 13 year old voice he says, “Eve passed the ball to Charity’s shoulder like it was an accident, it bounced like a bouncy ball to Natalie’s forehead and then Hillary’s elbow boosted the ball up to the hoop…it was beautiful, I don’t know how she does it. I also don’t know how she can be such a JERK to me and so nice to her opponents when they tell her that’s cheating.”
It is widely known, now, how I play when the ball is in my control. It’s conventional passing for me most of the time, you know the ball leaves my hands and my teammate catches it. When the pressure is on, though, I can make the ball go in with any circumstance. Bounce off an opponent, a teammate, the rim, whatever, and it will eventually go in. I can’t explain it, but I’ve got the passing and shooting part of basketball down to a science. There’s been a lot of controversy over the years, like my brother says, but ultimately it was decided a long time ago that my tactics are acceptable as long as the ball doesn’t go out of bounds and I don’t injure someone in the process.
You’re wondering what all of this has to do with me feeling guilty and a man being in jail…I’m getting there.
In my hometown, Denver Colorado, there has been an increase in convenience store robberies in the last year. The robberies have hurt a lot of our town’s small business owners and the only one that had not been hit up was our neighborhood 7-11. Still, all of this had never affected me directly until my best friend and teammate Charity woke me up one morning with this insanely early message recorded on my iphone:
“Hey, girl! I just woke up from the most INCREDIBLE dream. You were a superhero HA HA. Guess what your power was? Okay, you’re not gonna answer…it was basketball! I know, doesn’t sound like a superpower, right? But trust me; you used your crazy passing skills to stop the convenience store robber…no joke. Your basketball flew out of nowhere, hit him in the face, then bounced to the alarm, then hit over the gumball machine, which sent him skating over to the pyramid of Dr. Pepper…and once that was knocked over there was no way he was getting up until the police came. It was like Home Alone all over again! Anyway, I’m too wired to go back to bed so I’m gonna go get a giant piece of Double Chocolate Cake to calm my nerves, sleep tight.”
Now, at 4am that message was gibberish and at 7am that message was a headache but at 2pm that message gave me an idea. When I got to 4th period that day, I bypassed my Math teacher (who was bound to tell me I had a ton of late work) and ran over to Charity’s desk.
“Genius. Freaking brilliant! You have no idea what you have done.” I whispered.
“No. I don’t.” Charity squinted at me and made a face like something smelled bad.
“You know that dream of yours? It’s not a dream, it’s a premonition.”
“Nooooo, it was definitely a dream. A crazy dream. Has your little brother been sneaking his smelly gym socks in your pillow again? Got you a little…confused?”
The sugar rush that Charity was on from her 2nd round of Double Chocolate Cake she had at lunch had her feisty and was the only thing that was even keeping her coherent at this time of day…which means it was bound to wear off soon, so I took the opportunity to explain my “heroic” plan.
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Now, I had no real personal reason to get involved in the convenience store robberies. BUT I have lived in the same house for 17 years and I have been going to the same 7-11 for the same amount of time. I can remember when I couldn’t see over the check-out counter; I could only see under it…and I still don’t put my hands on the edge of the counter for fear they will get stuck to years of gum buildup. Like I said though, I didn’t have a good personal reason to get involved except for the fact that the only remaining convenience store un-robbed was on MY turf. And like we say in basketball, “When the enemy/opponent is winning, do two things: 1. Play MAN-to-MAN defense and 2. FOUL.”
Charity and I didn’t know the exact day the convenience store robber would make his move, but we knew how to be ready. If I were to walk into that 7-11 blindfolded I would know that the Pringles are on the second shelf from the bottom right as you walk in, I would know that the third Slurpee spout from the left is a nasty Blue Ice flavor, and I would know that I should go through the right door because the left has an obnoxious bell.
Every night for two weeks I hid outside of the 7-11 and snuggled up to a concrete corner of the building while I waited for the perpetrator to make his move. One lonely Friday night at 3am I was having doubts and started whispering my frustration into the phone at an incoherent Charity. “My Mom is getting suspicious; she said that I’m getting split ends and my grades are slipping…she wants to know if I want to ‘tell her anything.’ He doesn’t seem to be—. “Just then a man in dark clothing and green tennis shoes creeped up to the right, bell-less door, put pressure on the lock with his hand and then kicked the bottom of the door. It popped open. Just like that. I screamed “Cherry pick!” into the phone (this was our code to call the police), I stepped out from the corner and slam dunked the ball on the back of the robber’s head. The force of my throw sent the man further into the store. The ball came back to my hands and I quickly sent it flying back at his nose, it ricocheted off of his bone and a heavy jug of windshield wiper fluid rebounded the ball and sent it back to our criminal’s stomach. The convenience store robber was lying on the floor in prime position for the basketball to hit the third Slurpee spout from the left…covering his face in ice cold Blue Ice flavored liquid. The ball returned to my hands and a few seconds later Officer Mckinley arrived at the scene. I watched them take away the convenience store robber from a neighbor’s backyard and then I crept back into my bed.
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When I woke up in the morning, it was all over the news that the robber was caught.
YOU still don’t know why I feel guilty, though, and now the story has caught up to where we began. SO…I’m in my room, beating up my Beyonce poster and chewing my fingernails because the convenience store robber was MR. ROGERS, the owner of our neighborhood 7-11. He’s in jail, they haven’t let him go yet…the sign of easy break-in, his black clothes, and his mysterious state when they found him are enough to keep him for questioning for a while.
What do I think? I think, “Why in the world would he rob his own store?” Mr. Rogers IS weird; he mumbles to himself when you come in the store with a friend and don’t buy anything and he wears the same sweater every day. BUT, he has owned that store for forever and never gotten in trouble before now.
…That’s it, I can’t take the pressure anymore, I have to tell my Mom that it’s my fault that Mr. Rogers is in jail. I THOUGHT I was doing the neighborhood a favor but—
“Hey, Eve! BREAKING NEWS. Mr. Roger’s just confessed to robbing other convenience stores in the city in order to help eliminate competition and to bring in more money.”
“Wait, no. Why would he break into his own store then?” I asked, unsure of her motives…maybe she knew something, maybe she was trying to get me to confess why I have split ends and my grades are slipping.
She explained, “Because his store was the only one left, it would look too suspicious if his was the only one not hit. AND he purposefully blacked out his cameras so that later there was no evidence it was him, just the proof that something had been robbed.”
I stood with my arms smugly folded, a quaint smile on my face. My mom looked a little disgusted by my reaction but she was too involved in the gossip to let it stop her mouth from moving.
“You know what the best part is?”She teased. ….“Tell me.”
“The only evidence they have of the person that helped catch Mr. Rogers is the audio from the video camera. Listen, it’s about to come on the news again…”
The proper woman on the news stated, “And here is the noise we have from our mysterious convenience store hero: BOOM, CRASH, BOOM, CRASH, BOOM.”
I shifted my body toward my Mom, “That’s the weirdest noise, I’ve ever heard.” THE END
Jason Mraz concert-2008
