(Editor’s Note: This essay was submitted to Priscilla Ord for a College Essay assignment.)
John Wahman
Featured Writer
One day I was riding my bike down a hill we used to call Havoc Hill because no one who attempted this hill would ever make it to the bottom without something crazy happening. Nothing changed on this day. I took the first half of the hill like a champ, getting through some of the most difficult turns un-scathed.
I continued downward at a hellish pace, and just when I thought I was going to be the first to make it, out came a car from a driveway causing me to slam my brakes, which then caused my bike to slide out, and I hit the black top hard. After the ordeal ended, and I was on my way home, I noticed a huge rip in my pants. Usually I would not care, but this was different: these were not just pants; these were my favorite pants. I could not just throw them away, so when I got home, I decided I would turn them into shorts where the rip was.
I wore those shorts constantly all summer until they were so beat up that they looked like an old rag draped over my hips.
I decided one morning that I would go grab a coffee from the Highs on the corner and so I did. I got the coffee and then went out front and sat on the ledge where I intended to drink my coffee and enjoy the pleasant morning aromas. Well, I got about half, maybe a little more, of my coffee down when a snobby looking woman pulled up in a very nice Mercedes.
She got out of the car in what looked like an outfit that cost more than me! She straightened herself out and then began to walk towards the entrance of the store. The woman, who looked to be about forty, was definitely not a local, and who knows what she was doing at my Highs in the slums, but she was.
On her way to the entrance, she caught sight of me sitting there with my coffee in my hand, holding it out in front of me. I looked at her face, and she got this expression on her face that sort of expressed compassion and disgust at the same time. At first, I did not understand why she was looking at me like that, but I quickly realized, as she got nearer. She walked up to me and dropped a twenty and some change into my coffee.
When she heard the splash, she looked in the cup and saw that I had coffee in it. I had no time to react to what she had just done because, when she realized that I was enjoying a cup of coffee and not a homeless boy begging, she turned pale white, as if to say, “Oh, crap.”
Then, as I was about to burst out laughing, she turned around, sprinted towards her car, jumped in, and hauled her ass back to wherever it was she came from. I did not really mind that she had thought I was homeless because even I thought I was rough looking.
To this day, I still have my jorts, and although they make me look homeless, they will always remain my favorite.