“Using your imagination, create a portrait of your city or town in which everything that you encounter is magical, exaggerated, or slightly altered from reality. Use whatever documentation method you prefer.”
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Stress. It consumes us.
“These potholes will rattle your car to pieces,” Mom grumbles as I drive a whopping 13 miles an hour down our undertreated gravel road.
I never usually take this road all the way down to get to town, but I’m in a hurry, and this is the fastest way to get somewhere without sitting at millions of stoplights.
“Godzilla could fall into these black holes.”
“Mom, you’re being a tad dramatic. My car is fine, I’m dodging as many potholes as I can, and even the ones I do hit aren’t that bad. Calm down.”
She doesn’t calm down, and I become more frantic. Just as I finish my sentence, my car comes to a scraping stop. That’s weird, there is no check engine light or anything of the sort. The gages look perfectly fine. Frazzled, I unbuckle and get out of the car to inspect the inside of the hood. As I get out and start to walk around my car, I almost trip over something on the road. It’s a tire. My car’s tire. I look at the rest of the car. All the wheels are off. Oh my gosh! My car actually has fallen apart. Crap. Just my luck.
Just when I’m about to cry to my mom about jinxing it, I feel the ground quiver. I stop and listen. Stomp. Thud. Stomp. Turning towards the oncoming noise, I look up into the sky and scream.
“Mom! Mom! Alien!” Mom gets out of the car looking exhausted. I point, she turns, she looks into the sky and screams with me this time.
“Sarah, it’s Godzilla!”
“We’re not in Japan. And we’re not on a movie set! It can’t be real.” As the monster gets closer, we stand there in shock and disbelief. 50 paces away from us, the creature stops, looks down at us, and roars an ear-deafening screech with the strength of 1,000 suns. It approaches us, and we finally snap out of it and run.
We keep running. And running. And running. But the monster seems to be on our tails. I look back just as a deep opening in the middle of the road opens up and engulfs the creature. The black hole swallows Godzilla with one large gulp followed by a belch and then it disappears. No more black hole. No more Godzilla.
I hang my head, sigh, and do a long, hard blink to clear my eyes from tears. When I open my eyes again, I’m back behind the wheel. I’m driving down our crappy gravel road once again as my mom starts, “These potholes could rattle-“
“Mom! Stop!”
“Excuse me?”
“Please don’t finish that sentence. We don’t want to make this small problem out to be a bigger one.”
“Well, okay.”
We drive along going 13 miles an hour until we get to our turn. I pull onto the paved road with relief. Times get rough, and we can get swallowed up whole by stress, but it’s glorious when we get through it all. These life lessons are never a waste.
Stress. It consumes us.
“These potholes will rattle your car to pieces,” Mom grumbles as I drive a whopping 13 miles an hour down our undertreated gravel road.
I never usually take this road all the way down to get to town, but I’m in a hurry, and this is the fastest way to get somewhere without sitting at millions of stoplights.
“Godzilla could fall into these black holes.”
“Mom, you’re being a tad dramatic. My car is fine, I’m dodging as many potholes as I can, and even the ones I do hit aren’t that bad. Calm down.”
She doesn’t calm down, and I become more frantic. Just as I finish my sentence, my car comes to a scraping stop. That’s weird, there is no check engine light or anything of the sort. The gages look perfectly fine. Frazzled, I unbuckle and get out of the car to inspect the inside of the hood. As I get out and start to walk around my car, I almost trip over something on the road. It’s a tire. My car’s tire. I look at the rest of the car. All the wheels are off. Oh my gosh! My car actually has fallen apart. Crap. Just my luck.
Just when I’m about to cry to my mom about jinxing it, I feel the ground quiver. I stop and listen. Stomp. Thud. Stomp. Turning towards the oncoming noise, I look up into the sky and scream.
“Mom! Mom! Alien!” Mom gets out of the car looking exhausted. I point, she turns, she looks into the sky and screams with me this time.
“Sarah, it’s Godzilla!”
“We’re not in Japan. And we’re not on a movie set! It can’t be real.” As the monster gets closer, we stand there in shock and disbelief. 50 paces away from us, the creature stops, looks down at us, and roars an ear-deafening screech with the strength of 1,000 suns. It approaches us, and we finally snap out of it and run.
We keep running. And running. And running. But the monster seems to be on our tails. I look back just as a deep opening in the middle of the road opens up and engulfs the creature. The black hole swallows Godzilla with one large gulp followed by a belch and then it disappears. No more black hole. No more Godzilla.
I hang my head, sigh, and do a long, hard blink to clear my eyes from tears. When I open my eyes again, I’m back behind the wheel. I’m driving down our crappy gravel road once again as my mom starts, “These potholes could rattle-“
“Mom! Stop!”
“Excuse me?”
“Please don’t finish that sentence. We don’t want to make this small problem out to be a bigger one.”
“Well, okay.”
We drive along going 13 miles an hour until we get to our turn. I pull onto the paved road with relief. Times get rough, and we can get swallowed up whole by stress, but it’s glorious when we get through it all. These life lessons are never a waste.
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