Wrong Battles
A few weeks ago, I decided to participate in the Edinburgh True Flash Award, a new writing competition looking for true stories under 250 words. I’d wanted to take part in a writing contest for a while, and this one seemed like a great opportunity. Memoir-specific competitions are rare, and 250 words? How hard could it be? I’d just write a few of these and send out the best one.
From the way I phrased that, you might expect something went wrong along the way. But no, that’s exactly what happened. I wrote three of these microscopic true stories, or microtrues (this just popped into my head), and one of them far outshone the others. Looking forward to sharing that one with you in a few months.
The microessay I’m posting today is one of the others. Not quite there, but, I trust, still good. Let me know what you think.
(By the way, since deciding to not submit this one to the competition, I beefed it up a bit. It’s therefore gotten a bit over 250 words.)
The playground was a battleground. There were the generals: the teachers, whom you’d glimpse once in a while as they hurried to and from mysteriously crucial errands. Then, the officers, of whom there were lots: the bullies. Last, and certainly least, came the common soldier, the conscript: runts like my friends and I, struggling to survive in a world not made for us. That was the simple truth of it. We did not consider the ones above us our enemies. The playground was theirs to rule, and for us to even be allowed outside at all was a privilege.
Once, I almost stood up to a bully. This big Romani guy, who sported a full beard and was two heads taller than anyone else—whether because he’d been held back several grades, as was sadly common with people of his ethnicity, or because he didn’t even attend our school at all and was just a visiting officer, I never found out—intimidated me in front of all my friends. As he backed away, I felt my cheeks flush. My fists clenched. Hot, wet salt burned at the corners my eyes as I stared at his huge back and before I could rein myself in I yelled, “Hey! Bushman!” A word we Romanians use to describe a particular brand of homeless person, the one who shows no signs of wanting to improve his living situation. I do not know what psychological effects my words had on the guy, but I blinked and he was right beside me again, his supersized torso blocking out the sun. A palm went up. Then it sliced down, karate chopping the brim of my hat so hard it dropped like a heavy curtain over my eyes. I’d need help restoring my vision.
“Fucking loser,” he said, to which I lowered my head even further. His world, his rules, and I’d just tried to break the most important one.
Don’t start battles you know you can’t win.
Ah yes, Mr Atanasov. There are times when our greatest accomplishment is just keeping our mouths shut. A perfect little jewel of a memoir.
A masterclass in short story writing. Bravo.