Every Friday night my friends and I have a lazy rendezvous at the carnival. Every Friday we would walk around the park making up funny stories for the lives of the people who worked there. We knew everything little thing about their lives that we had made up for them; down every last detail. For example, Dave now works at the carnival because he  wet his pants during his first audition that scarred him for life, or the reason as to why Jane painted her nails last week. It was to impress a coworker at the carnival to posh off her sense of style, maybe to hook up later.

I would listen to the conversations and laugh outwardly to show I was listening, but in my heart I knew it was cruel to make fun of others without getting to know them first. I never commented anything, however, because I was considerably afraid of the outcome if I spoke up. Would my friends abandon me and call me a loser for standing up for others? Would I be labeled as a hypocrite? Would I never have friends again? My fear kept me back from saying anything something that might make my friends hate me.

However as they were walking around the fairgrounds this week, I heard a unfamiliar voice call among the booths. The voice was masculine, yet young calling to play the basket toss. I looked up from the ground, where I usually starred at, scanned the faces of the people standing in the booths trying to locate the source of the new voice. I turned around and saw cute boy wearing a tight white shirt which accentuated his muscles holding three orange fair balls to play the carnival game. My eyes sparkled and my cheeks turned red. Never have I seen so handsome a young man in my life. Hot as Hades I whispered to myself as I looked back down at the ground frightened if he saw me look at him.

By this time, my friends have also noticed the new voice and glanced at me with my cheeks painted red, which was out of the usual porcelain tone my face procured.

“Hey look, Sam is blushing!” a friend of mine elbowed me.

“No… no I’m not.” I stuttered trying desperately to draw attention away from myself. But, obviously my cherry red face wasn’t helping me at all.

My friends pushed me closer to the booth counting me to play the game. My heart told me to play the game and impress the boy, but I was deathly afraid of messing up and ruin my first impression to the boy. Especially the fact that I would be throwing a ball. I cannot throw a ball for the life of me. The best I could possibly ever manage is throw the ball into the ditch or accidentally hit the boy’s face, and obviously I didn’t want that. I pushed against my friend in an attempt to escape, but she grabbed ahold of my shoulders and shook me saying, “you got this.”

And at this moment, I knew shying away was no good, and that fear was the one holding me back from acting, afraid that I would mess up in front of this boy and ruin my first impression; and with wild eyes I turned to the boy holding the orange fair balls and said, “I’ll give it a shot.”

 

Note: I tried to type out word for word what I wrote on my English diploma by memory, obviously It isn’t word perfect sorry.