Waiting to Be Great: 500 Words a Day Fiction – Day 7
How is the world ever supposed to know my greatness when it keeps dealing me these average situations?
For ten years I have been perfecting the defense for a mountain lion attack.
Sense him leaping through the air
Wait til the last possible second before he clenches onto your neck
Turn to face him
Fall slowly onto your back
Extend your foot upward into his belly
Kick him over the top of you as you reverse somersault.
Of course after you perform this move the mountain lion will run away scared and confused. And I can’t tell you how many girls I’ve taken out hiking just hoping that the mountain lion would pounce so they could see my move.
Or the shark defense – as he comes up from underneath my board I leap straight up into the air striking his nose with a tight right hand then returning back down on top of my board as he scurries away. All the asshole bros who tell me I can’t surf out in the water would sure have something to say to me then.
But no, the toughest decision I can make in a day is whether or not to bring a jacket in case it rains.
A lot of people have talked a big game and then when their moment came, well, they shit the bed. Like my friend Tommy was always saying he was a tough guy and one night we’re all out getting into some trouble and a guy calls his girlfriend a hooker. A hooker. Everyone stops and you can hear the “oohhhhhhhs” rumbling through the crowd and Tommy turns to him like he’s real angry and says, “you’re the hooker,” and that was it. He didn’t sock him in the face or stab him or anything. Everyone just has a laugh and walks their own way. So the next night I invite this girl out and I ask her to dress like she’s a call girl, like we are doing some kind of role play date, and she really took it to heart. We walked up and down the street downtown for three hours, I’m just praying someone will say something. Nothing. Only finally she opened her mouth and was like, “Are you gonna take me to fuckin dinner or what?” And I thought, well christ I did invite her out, so we went into Applebee’s.
I have no way of knowing when my moment is going to come, I just have to be ready. I have to keep practicing my moves and trust that I’m going to get my shot and that the right amount of people will be there to witness it. Doesn’t have to be huge, maybe just the local news or 80,000 YouTube hits, just something to document my true calling to greatness. There are still some people that don’t actually believe I can defend against a mountain lion attack because they just assume that mountain lions are more fierce than we are, but I know the story differently.
