Tandy Hard #1

I cared what she thought, so when she dared me I knew I was in trouble. A dare is something you can’t take back or alter. Once it’s said you have two choices. Do the dare, and risk humiliation and bodily harm accomplishing the act; or don’t do the dare and be condemned to be a coward for the rest of your high school existence.

In rural Nebraska, there’s not much to do, so our dares tend to be a little more violent than the paltry “run around the circle clucking like a chicken.” Climbing water towers and running along the tops of the corrugated tin barn roofs were just a few of the more risky endeavors and dares. Jim had broken is collar bone falling off his parent’s roof once. That had ended the Truth or Dare games for a while, but not permanently.

Those were the physically risky dares, there were other psychologically risky dares. Peeping into her bedroom and seeing Mrs. Barnesdale naked was a truly harrowing experience. The worst was the termed the “Gauntlet”. Running through the side of town was a deep drainage ditch/culvert. Nettle trees intertwined around the banks forming an enclosed tunnel about five feet tall. Imagine the “Evil Trees” in the Wizard of Oz feed by corn fertilizer runoff, and you’d get a pretty good picture of what it looked like. The drainage trench would go under the gravel roads, and a big cement cylinder would serve as the bridge structure. Raccoons would make nests there, snakes would fall asleep, lying out on the dry cracked mud, left over from the last rain. Cicadas would nestle in the trees making an eerie er-er sound. Sometimes the sound would stop instantaneously, like the hundreds of insects had halted on cue, to something more powerful and sinister. At night the thorns and leaves blocked the stars, so the Gauntlet seemed like an ascent into the netherworld with no Virgil for a guide.

We played truth or dare to shake off our childhood. We proved to each other that we were strong and brave, wise and experienced. Risking and telling it all to show that we were adults, that we accepted the risk as a part of a so-called thrilling adult life.

She knew what she asked of me; she was getting back at me for Mike and I’s “extra-curricular activities” behind the football field. And I had no choice to accept. Not doing so would relegate me to the lowest of the low. I had to walk the Guantlet, without a flashlight.

As I entered in, climbing between a hole through the trees, Mike slipped me his tiny key chain flashlight. “Only for emergencies, they’ll see if you use it.” He whispered, as I awkwardly climbed down the dirt bank. I was greeted at the bottom with the small shower of soil I had displaced on my way down.

I walked gingerly through the Gauntlet, lightly placing my foot down until I was sure there wasn’t something that would yelp or hiss as I put my weight on it. I breathed very quietly as I walked, hoping that if I was silent as possible, the trees would ignore my presence. I was fighting back the monsters in my imagination, preventing them from coming out. And I was finally winning. As I paced through a cement bridge, my foot hit something light and hollow.

They wouldn’t see the light because I was enclosed, and I stopped (I felt at little bolder for making it this far). Using the flashlight, I could see some kid’s old cigar box. Inside was his baseball cards and a few green army guys, part of his childhood hidden away from the rest of the world.

But then, a Opossum saw my presence as he moved down the tunnel. He hissed, and I thought I saw foam. Not wanting Rabies, I started running and screaming pell-mell through the rest of the Gauntlet. I finally arrived to see my friends stricken and then grinning faces.

“What was it?” Mike asked.

“Some opossum, scared the shit out of me though” I said.

“We could tell, but what’s that?” She said, as the others glanced at the cigar box.

“Some kids’ stuff I found under the bridge.”

“I dare you to burn it.”

And I was suddenly tired of Truth or Dare.