By LM Preston, author of Building Your Empowered Steps and Homeschooling While Working To Shape Amazing Learners, www.empoweredsteps.com
Many of us fear embarrassment to the point of going to great lengths to avoid it. With the exception of comedians, making fun of our past mistakes, goof-ups or unpleasant experiences isn’t common. Instead, we typically try to forget those situations ever happened.
ONE OF MY EMBARRASING MOMENTS
The kids in my neighborhood would spend tons of time making up games. One we played was truth or dare. Usually, I wasn’t invited to play because I was the youngest kid in the neighborhood. However, this particular time, they allowed me to play seemed like the best day of my life. I was going to play with the big kids, and no longer follow behind them. That day, Miniworm had arrived, and she was on top of her little world.
The SET UP
The game went on as usual. Dares were made, secrets were told and the bottle spun. Finally, it was my turn. My moment, my acceptance, and then it came. The kid that had made the last spin, looked at me with a sneaky grin, and I knew immediately that I was doomed.
THE DARE
“I dare you to eat this beetle!” the kid said. I gulped. Then I compared the penalty for not going through with a challenge. The penalty was to let every kid spit in your face. The decision was difficult, the choices were both gross. However, I refused to be made to eat something that I didn’t want.
STANDING UP TO MY SO-CALLED FRIENDS
At that moment of recognition, I felt strong and fierce. Ok, no really I was scared to death. However, I stood and said, “I renege on the dare!” There were gasp, snickers, and whispers. I held my ground, stuck out my chest and licked my lips. “You know what that means don’t ya?” the kid with the dead fat beetle snickered.
“Yeah, and I don’t care!” I said, and swallowed as a tear ran from my eye. Man, I was so angry. The other kids bustled to stand in line in front of me. Never before in our game of Truth or Dare had someone challenged their fate. I was the first, and they relished in the chance to demean me further.
There I stood, as each kid gathered as much saliva in their mouths as possible and spit in my face. My eyes closed as I felt the thick, cool, wet globs slide from my forehead, down my nose to my lips. I held back a gag.
Finally, it was over. My best-friend, who was last in line did a fake spitting sound that held little or no power. Then she took out a tissue and wiped my face.
“Why didn’t you just do the dare?" she whispered.
“I opened my eyes and smiled at her then said, “Cause I didn’t want to eat a stupid beetle.”
GROWING FROM YOUR EXPERIENCES and USING THEM TO HELP OTHERS
When I sit down to write my novels from a teenaged perspective, I have a lot of material to pull from. I was called all sorts of names, teased, and jeered at. I wasn’t the lowest on the totem pole, but I was somewhere near the bottom middle of the middle school pecking order. Yet, through these experiences I learned something about myself. I was a survivor and I was never a follower. That is what I portray in my fiction books and that is a skill I sharpen every day. We all have a purpose and the capacity to stand up for ourselves. Never forget that.
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Blog: http://empoweredsteps.blogspot.com/
Website: Fiction Books: www.lmpreston.com Empowered Steps: www.empoweredsteps.com
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