#close call

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radioactivepeasant:

I won’t be online for a lot of tomorrow, so I’m posting Storytime now.

This week’s episode: The Creepy Car (Or: why I didn’t ride my bike much as a young teen)

My neighborhood is probably one of the safest you’ll find around here. The neighbors look out for each other – to the point where some habitually leave their doors unlocked. Small packs of neighborhood children roam freely and without fear through everyone’s yards, and nobody minds. My house tends to be a central focal point for shenanigans.

The adults in this neighborhood all tend to keep an eye out for youngsters, whether they’re the parents or not. Same goes for the grownups too. Once, when I was probably 16, a policewoman chased several big guys into the neighborhood. She stopped them on our street and cuffed all three guys by herself while waiting for backup. She never knew, but she had the occupants of five different houses ready and waiting to run out there if things got violent.

So now that you have an idea of how safe our neighborhood is NOW, let me point out that there was a time when it wasn’t so safe. When I was about 15, and the neighborhood was still only about half full, there weren’t as many kids as there are now. There were two about our age who lived four streets away from us, and sometimes we babysat their younger siblings. My sister and I used to have to ride our bikes down there. There was a short route with few hills, but we couldn’t take it.

You see, a registered sex offender lived in one of the houses on that route, and none of the kids were allowed to walk or ride past his house.

So we had to take a longer route with two giant hills that were absolutely killer to skinny little teen and tween legs with no muscle like mine.

Well one Saturday morning the girl from the house four streets down (let’s call her Sam) and a girl two houses over (let’s call her Natasha) had come over to hang out. We were goofing around on walkie talkies, playing with nerf guns, typical kid stuff. Anyway it gets close to lunchtime and we decide to ride over to the one Sam’s house on the other side of the neighborhood.

So here’s two 15 year olds, a 14 year old, and a 13 year old all on our bikes and riding through the streets. Natasha had these little mirrors on her bike, if I remember correctly, and I think she’s the one who noticed the car first.

A big black car was driving very slowly just a few feet behind us. We couldn’t see through the windshield. Well we thought maybe he wanted to pass and couldn’t get around us, so the four of us rolled up onto the sidewalk and didn’t think more of it. But he maintained his slow speed and kept up right behind us.

We thought that was a little weird, but ignored him and turned onto another street. So did the big black car. Well maybe his destination was in the same direction as ours, we thought, and made that one awful turn that takes you up a giant hill.

The car turned too.

By that time all four of us were on edge, being alone with no adults in sight. One of us (it may have been my sister) tersely said, “Speed up.”

And hill or no hill we started pedaling like our feet were on fire. The black car got closer.

At the end of the street, Sam’s cul-de-sac was visible, with her garage door open. We pedaled like the devil was behind us, over the last stretch of road, up over the curb, onto the long driveway. All four of us dropped the bikes on the grass and pelted across the yard to the garage, not daring to look behind us. We charged into the garage, and someone yelled “GO!” while Sam fumbled with the doorknob into the house. After what felt like minutes, the door opened and we fell into the house. Sam slammed and locked the door and we all ran to lay flat on the floor in the front room, out of sight of the windows. We could just see the road outside, but we couldn’t be seen. As we peeked through the curtains, the big black car sat in the cul-de-sac.

It didn’t pull into another driveway. It didn’t pull into Sam’s driveway. It sat there for about twenty more seconds, then it turned around and drove away. We all giggled with relief, feeling very proud of ourselves, and soon forgot the incident as we made sandwiches and went to build a lego metropolis.

It wasn’t until this year that it actually occurred to me how dangerous that could have been. I don’t know what the driver of the big black car was doing, or what their intentions were. I don’t know what, if anything, would have happened if we’d stopped.

There’s a part of me that can’t shake the feeling that we had a close call that day.

Ok in hindsight, well over a decade later, I really should have told my parents about that. That was kind of alarming.

Morning After The morning after was equal parts reality and fantasy, both vying for her attention, w

Morning After

The morning after was equal parts reality and fantasy, both vying for her attention, waiting for her guard to drop before lulling her away from the other. The heavy lust of the night before was gone, replaced by a certain sort of disbelief that she couldn’t quite describe. It was a weight in her stomach while all she could feel was a sense of weightlessness. 

He was sleeping in the other room. She’d slid out of bed without waking him, although that wasn’t really through any intention of her part. Mornings were quiet, and she was quiet along with them. The office was instantly homely and alien, dust hanging in the air just for effect. It was so him she wanted to smash it, destroy every last piece of it and just start all over. 

Which was the fantasy kicking back in, some destructive urge that was a hangover from the night before. Drunk, fumbled, rushed sex, and more than a few blows to her backside from his more than accomplished hands. She’d known it was a bad idea, but when had good ideas been any fun?

She debated leaving without waking him, grabbing a coffee and then pretending nothing had happened when she next saw him in a lecture. It would be easy enough, and he’d be sure to understand, even if it might take him a week or two to figure it out. But it would be cowardly, and more importantly it wasn’t what she wanted. She had been drunk going in, but now that she was sober, when morning’s half light was seeping in through the blinds, hot and out of focus, it didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

Rules, of course, were in the way, but rules weren’t made to facilitate your own self enjoyment. They were there to protect people, and she had had enough of being protected. She wanted to dangle off the side of the bridge, just live in a moment where she had jumped, where she was falling and falling, for a moment. 

It wasn’t a suicidal urge so  much as an urge for everything except the suicide. She didn’t want to die, but she wanted to live with that wonderful certainty that she had decided to do just that. Freedom through destruction, falling and falling and not giving two shits either way.

She yawned and smiled, turning on her foot and heading back into the bedroom. Halfway between fantasy and reality, and just as fucked up as both. Mornings were weird, and they made her weirder. Too quiet. Too much space to think your own thoughts, and following the threads.


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abraxas-calibrator:

cocoainthemorning:

“I briefly considered making calcoins a real thing in tandem with this update. I asked somebody how bitcoins worked, and the absolute worst case scenario happened. Bitcoins were explained to me. So obviously I axed that idea.”

— Andrew Hussie (via revolutionator)

are you telling me that seven years ago andrew hussie almost got into crypto. that this was another timeline we just narrowly avoided.

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