Week 10 Story: Recess Love

Recess Love

“So, I think I’m going to ask Ainsley out at recess today” Carter whispered to Keaton.

 “Dude, I was going to ask her out today and you know that I’ve liked her for 2 weeks now!” Keaton fired back a little above a whisper.

 “Then you’re going to have to beat me in a race to her” Carter said back.

So, the two went to lunch just waiting for the moment when the loud bell came on to signal that it was recess.

“We have to at least make this fair, we should both wait for her to get outside with her friends and then we will line up and race towards her. The first one to get to her gets to ask her to be their boyfriend” Keaton said to Carter.

The time came and the two walked slowly out their both staring at Hailey making sure the time was right. But Carter knew he wasn’t as fast as Keaton so he decided that he was going to have to make a new attempt to get her.

“I think the coast is clear, she is in line to play tetherball, so now is the perfect chance” Carter said.

The boys lined up evenly on the playground and looked each other down as if they were about to run in the Olympics. They both counted to 3 and on “Go” they both took off sprinting as fast as they could.

Keaton and Carter were dead even for about the first 10 yards, and then Carter started to slow down. Keaton thinking, he had it in the bag kept running as fast as he could until he reached Ainsley.

With a slight sweat and a heavy pant of breath Keaton ran up to Ainsley and asked, “Do you want to go out with me?”

Ainsley looking at Keaton strangely said “Uhhh.. look Carter seems to be hurt over there we need to go check on him”

This is an image of a child hurt which I found on Brian Bajakian's chiropractor website.

The two walked over to Carter who was laying on the ground pretending to be in agonizing pain.

“What happened Carter?” Ainsley said in a very concerned voice. “I was going to come ask you to be my girlfriend but Keaton shoved me down and kept running towards you.” Carter barely working the words out.

“I would never date someone who would do such a terrible thing. How would you like to be my boyfriend Carter?”

Carter just smiled and said “Yes!” as he gleamed over at Keaton in complete disgust.

Authors Note:

This story is loosely based off of “Why the Possum Plays Dead” which is a short story about a rabbit and a possum. Both of the animals in the story desperately wanted wives so they would travel to a nearby village in which they would search. The rabbit was much faster than the possum so he reached the village first in which he delivered a message to the Chief that everyone must get married. By the time the possum reached the village, everyone was married including his friend the rabbit. So, the rabbit said that he would go to the next village and do the same making sure there would be a wife for the possum, but instead he decided to bring the message that there must be war at once. So as fighting started to break out, the possum reached the village in which they tried to attack him and instead of fighting, the possum played dead instead. In my story, I felt that there was no need for war but I also wanted some deception. I symbolized Keaton as the rabbit since he was much faster and could beat Carter, and I symbolized Carter as the possum since he knew he was slower. I had him pretend to be injured like the possum playing dead, except instead of the rabbit tricking the possum, I had Carter tricking Keaton. Overall, this story is more of a tortoise versus the hare but instead of just being slow, there was trickery involved in winning.

Bibliography:

Myths and Legends of the Great Plains by Katharine Berry Judson (1913).

The specific story of "Why the Possum Plays Dead" can be found in this link.