The Hot Rod
Jed wasn’t even close to cool, despite his own internal certainty to the contrary.
Through all of his junior high and early high school years, Jed was alternately invisible or punchably solid, depending on the gender of those surrounding him in the locker-lined corridor.* It took him a long while to figure out that the girls were staring through him, not at him. And somehow the punches the guys threw his way as they passed by weren’t quite the same as the ones the ballplayers threw at one another.
But this was senior year and thus a clean slate, an opportunity for Jed to prove himself worthy of the higher levels of the teenage social heirarchy and claim his rung on the ladder. Jed leaned easily against his hot rod, ran his hand lovingly over the thick layers of the burnt orange suede paint he spent hours painstakingly applying beneath the blazing summer sun, and thought, “This…this is definitely going to be my year.”
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Written in response to this week’s Six Sentence Stories challenge, hosted by Girlie on the Edge. Each week writers are challenged to spin a tale in just six sentences.
This week’s cue is CLAIM.
Click on the link right here to join us. Read some great stories and link up to share your own!
*This bit courtesy of Clark Scottroger. Proof that when the words don’t come easy, sometimes all it takes is a little help from your friends to get them flowing again.
**Featured image by Jon Koop on Unsplash
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14 Comments
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Oh dear! Maybe the year he catches a clue…
Loved your description of invisibility versus solidity by gender.
Yes, LOL. Maybe the year he catches a clue.
Thanks, Liz. That description was all Clark’s. He made me promise to describe the “cool dude” in just that way. So I did!
I think maybe with that car it will impress the guys and make the year a good one.
Maybe. If not for his hideous suede paint! LOL
But Jed is cool! Just hasn’t been recognized yet, lol. He’ll come into his own one day 😀
You did a good job capturing the sense of “otherness” some feel during those awkward years.
Good Six!
I’d agree, Denise. He just has to find his niche. This turned out OK considering I had NOTHING coming to me for most of the week. Thanks to Clark for the inspiration and the borrow. 😀
I suspect great literature and locked wards are populated by those of us who, looking back on our youth, mistake the acceptance of maturity as a chance to alter who were remember ourselves to have been.
Nice work with a simple idea, the mark of a skilled writer (and totally inspiring word envy in my blogger heart) lol
‘cellent Six, yo
Thank you, Clark.
See, now I really think the best words on this page are the ones you supplied about him being invisible and punchably solid. The FB conversation about the orange suede paint was what finally got me going this week.
Love what you say about the chance to alter who we remember ourselves to have been. Yeah…so true.
He must have something going for him if he can manage to possess a cool car. The rest will figure it out, and by the time they do, he’ll have figured out what really matters.
The question is whether that orange suede painted car is really cool or not. Whether we’re talking about cars or people, is coolness in the eye of the beholder? Or is it something internal? These are the things I think about on a Sunday evening after looking at the Sixes! LOL
I also liked the solid vs. transparent description. Great Six!
Great words, right? Props to Clark for that phrase that springboarded my six to completion.
There’s a bit of Jed in all of us fellas. It’s a constant battle of manufactured bravado and the drive to actually carve our niche! So nice to be back here, Lisa.
Thanks, Eli. Good to see you here!