Giving the Bird
Hello! It’s me in the present! Along with creating art, I love to write. I like writing essays, journal/blog entries, short stories, drafts for books that I should focus on. I’ve had a few articles published. I wrote this story for a memoir class I took a couple of years ago. Enjoy!
At that moment, it felt like it was the right thing to do. My action brought some peace, but just like Icarus who flew too close to the sun. I came crashing down into an ocean of embarrassment and foolishness.
On a hot and sticky August day, I was cleaning out my room. The summer break of my Junior year was almost over, and I was about to start my last year of high school. When you’re disposing of old notebooks filled with doodles and test papers, you’re not dressed in your best mall get-up. I was in a white tank top and baggy jean shorts. My frizzy dirty blonde hair was tied up with a hair clip. You feel as dressed up as a crumpled gum wrapper you find at the bottom of one of your old dirty handbags.
While fiddling with the family’s paper shredder, my mom walked over to the entrance of my room. She asked me, “Can you go to the Iavarone and buy a half-gallon of milk?” Seeing how this small chore can be an opportunity to take a break from shredding, I accepted. My mother handed me the milk money, I slipped on my pink sandals and headed outside into the summer heat.
Summertime does not only bring in long days; it also brings out the creeps. Creeps that drive down the street, honk their car horns and yell out, “Hey baby!” and “Yo sexy!” I was appalled and shocked that these older men were hitting on a teenager, but a teenager who looked and felt like garbage.
I managed to escape all the street commotion by going inside Iavarone. I strolled on the sawdust-dusted wooden floors to the chilly dairy aisle and picked up a half-gallon jug of milk. I paid for the milk and let out a sigh about going back outside with the creeps.
There was a slight hope that the creeps would clear out like fish from polluted waters, they did not. The same terrible pickup lines initiated with the sound of a car horn, the dictionary doesn’t have a word that can describe how annoyed I was. I began to sprint back home.
I reached the street corner I needed to cross to get back to my side of the street. With mad rage, I rapidly press the beg button at the crosswalk. A Honda Civic with dark tinted windows pulled up right next to the curb I was standing on. The car began to blare its horns, my last thin nerve snapped.
I had to express my anger in a way that didn’t involve words. I put down all my fingers on my right hand except for my middle one. All that anger I held on that day came off in that flip-off to that driver. The crosswalk signaled that it was my turn to walk across the street. With my head held high, I strutted across the street like I was hot stuff.
I felt my cellphone buzzing in my back pocket. I pulled it out, it was my friend Laura calling. I picked up, thinking that she wanted to go to the mall, but nothing like that came out.
"Dude, you just flipped off my dad! He was trying to say hi!" She said.
My eyes became huge and my face became bright red. I repeatedly said sorry to Laura. She was laughing when I explained my side of the story. It seemed like there was an understanding that the whole incident was a misunderstanding, but I still felt embarrassed. I didn’t go out for the rest of the day.
The next time I saw Laura’s father was at our high school graduation. I ran into him on the grounds of Queens College. I was still ashamed about the event that happened in the summer. I put my head down and I almost walked into a bush when I was going to meet up with my parents.
As years passed, the embarrassment from that day wore away and turned into an ice breaker story that I tell at parties, classes or a starter at improv class. The laughter and chuckles I get every time I tell the story scare away any shame I had from that day. It’s even an inside joke between Laura and I.