300 Writing Prompts: 2

Prompt 2: Have you ever spoken up when you saw something going on that was wrong? Were you scared? What ended up happening?

I don’t personally remember but one of my Mom’s favorite stories is when we were at an amusement park when I was a kid. My parents, in their parenting wisdom, got each of us kids our own map. We entered the park and at some point crossed paths with another family. Only one of their kids had a map, and when the older girl saw that all of us had our own maps she reached over and took my little sister’s saying her sister didn’t have one so she should give hers to her sister. And I guess at that point I walked over and just took the map out of the girl’s hands and handed it back to my sister and said “This is my sister’s.” My Mom has always been proud of that story. I don’t remember it so I can’t say if I was scared or not, but for my sister it had a good ending.

Another time was probably in college. But I guess some backstory is necessary first. My best friend who was my roommate at the time developed a few odd habits.

• One was throwing things at people; she was a bit of a tomboy, and it was almost always easy to dodge what she threw (she would have felt horrible had anyone ever actually gotten hurt).
• And second she often shouted “get out” at people as they walked in. She is a bit sarcastic and got tired of people asking if they could come in even though we’d shout come in when they knocked, the walls were really thin so it wasn’t hard to hear, and then they’d double and sometimes triple check before finally stepping in. Our neighbor was confused when she started shouting “get out” and he confronted her one day about it because it had hurt his feelings a bit. They talked and as soon as he understood it was just a joke and her way of saying “Hi, someone is here. What do you want?” he was okay with it. From that day forward he would shout her name saying either “I’m here” and she’d shout “get out” from where ever she was or “I’m leaving” and she would call or say in a really sweet voice “come in” before he’d leave laughing.

His roommate (who was also our other roommate’s boyfriend, so he was over a lot). He didn’t like being told to “get out” either and asked her to not say it to him. She agreed. One day we were both making lunch and he walked in. She forgot and shouted “Get out” and he got after her (I don’t remember what he said though, but he was mad) and in response she picked up a half empty water bottle (the throw away squishy plastic kind) and threw it at him. He could have dodged, but instead he puffed up his chest and took the hit letting it hit him in the center of his chest. He slammed his hands down on the table his jaw clenched. You could see it in his face and eyes, he was contemplating something. Then he wrapped his fingers under the table’s edge and flipped it up. Everything went flying off and onto the kitchen floor, including my frozen gluten free burrito. Then he slammed it back down. I was mortified, My Burrito! It was like the entire world just stopped. My burrito was on the ground. Gluten free burritos cost three to four dollars for one and I have to drive two hours to get to a store that does sell them and I don’t have a car! I remember both of us standing there shocked (I was for different reasons…you can kind of see where my priorities were at that moment)

I snarled at him “you knocked my burrito on the floor.”

He tried to pick it up “Sorry, I’ll buy you a new one”

I dropped to the ground snatched the plate and burrito away from his hands before he could touch them and snarled “It’s gluten free you can’t buy them out here.” He tried apologizing again and I glared at him. Get Out. I don’t know if I said it or just thought it but he got the message loud and clear because he got up without another word and left.

He didn’t talk to me again until our next encounter. I cried later and realized how angry it really had made me, not just because of the burrito but because he chose to take the hit then got even angrier. It also didn’t help that our roommates, his girlfriend and our other first year roommate, both just laughed making the whole thing into a joke. Saying he was just joking and that everything was fine. I was so mad. Here she was dating this guy and she was going to ignore his temper? That is a huge red flag, not just that he flipped our table up but also that he took a good twenty to thirty seconds thinking about what he was going to do. He thought about it before he did it. I also realized later that had my burrito not fallen on the floor I probably would have said a lot of things I would have regretted.

(For those wondering I still ate the burrito. Although I probably wouldn’t have had it been cooked.)

Our next encounter is probably a better answer for this prompt. One of our other roommates got married during our final semester. She moved out and came to visit and hang out often. She talked about married life one time and a few days later the younger roommate’s boyfriend was over while my best friend and I were making lunch. They were sitting at the table and suddenly he just looked at us. “hey the other day when *married roommate’s name* was over did you hear what she was really saying?” then he made his voice like hers “guys I had sex.”

I had my back to him and my friend just glanced at me like this is soooo awkward! I gave her a look back yeah it is. Then this angry feeling burned at the base of my neck and in my chest; it must have been stronger than the timid unease in my stomach because I looked at him and replied clearly and to my surprise confidently “No. *She* isn’t like that. She meant how amazing and fun it is to live with her best friend and how great it is to never have to leave each other at the end of the day.” I turned my attention back to the stove and he didn’t talk to me again for the rest of the semester.

Our married friend had never mentioned sex or sleeping, she had just said it was fun getting to live with her best friend and never having to leave or be alone. She said the normal mundane things you do every day were somehow more fun with her husband around.

I hope that wasn’t too confusing. I still want to put my notes from the LTUE conference up here, but there are a lot of them and I am starting to think I don’t want them to be just a blog post. I don’t know, I haven’t decided yet. Anyway got any questions ask them, if not have an awesome day and keep writing!