“Mean Kid”

A micro memoir by Josh Jacobs (9).

“Come back here!” He yelled. As I ran through the rough spiky bushes at dusk. I ran for a while, “I think I lost him” I said in my head. I hear a branch crack, my heart drops, it was just a deer. All of a sudden my heart starts to beat faster and faster, I start to get scared because I realize I am alone in the dark, but I feel someone’s presence around me, suddenly someone comes behind me, and tags me. “Haha, you’re IT” me and my friends and this mean bully kid, were playing neighborhood tag at night, where we just play regular tag but in the big neighborhood, instead of a playground for example. Especially at night, this can be extremely scary since there were significantly big woods and a substantial cliff in one spot. All of this was technically part of the neighborhood, so it was all fair game. Nobody really got hurt when playing this big game of tag, except one time, where it could have ended fatal. 

All was going well as my friends and I (and the mean kid) were playing a simple, innocent game of neighborhood tag in the dark. 

I was hiding behind a big tree near the woods and the mean kid that hated me was “IT”. A couple minutes go by, I start to get bored thinking if I should go out of my hiding spot. As I consider this I look behind the tree and see the mean kid about 50 feet from me, he looks directly in my direction, so I bolt into the woods as he chases me. I weave through the trees and bushes, as the mean kid gets farther and farther away from me since he is notably bigger and fatter than me. I quickly look behind me while running to look for him, but trip on a branch. The kid is getting closer and closer. I get up and run the other way which I immediately regret because the cliff is straight ahead. I start to get tired and slow down, but then I get closer to the cliff and the mean kid gets closer to me. I reach all the way up to the cliff, and at the same time he reaches me and “tags” me, but with a little too much force I get pushed backwards and fall really hard to the edge of the cliff saving myself with my arms but if I did not, it could have ended tragically. I stand up quickly and yell in his face as he looks at me in a state of grief , “I am so sorry” he says but it was not sincere. I bike home trembling, thinking about that moment and how I almost could have died.

I only slightly messed up my arms, but the mean kid was not invited back to our games of neighborhood tag, ever again.