"I dare you" - An Academic Anecdote

Part 0

"I dare you to," Kylee states, nearly monotone as always.

"Okay," I say taking the lime, she seems surprised, but I can never say no to a dare.

Raw, lime isn't that bad, especially when all the juice currently resides in rice instead of the pulp, but still decently sour. But, the thing is I like sour things. I have forever. Green Apples, Sour Ropes, Sour Skittles, if it didn't burn when I ate it, it wasn't for me.

"It's not that bad," I say, handing her the other lime," Try It."

Kylee, also one to never say no to a dare, agreed, her face looked like she was preparing for some horrific event, but she seemed surprised that I wasn't lying, which is reasonable. Middle school was middle school, y'know.

Anyway, as our group continued to prepare our meal, that may I remind you we were being graded on, Kylee and I appeared in each kitchen group and asked if we could have their limes, the lack of questions was surprising then, but in hindsight, I don't think they really cared.

Oh, you don't know where we are, okay I guess I'll set the scene for you. 8th grade, a small enough school that you knew everyone's first and last names. Home Ec, or as I lovingly called it "Food Class" it's just faster to say, and more accurate anyway, I didn't learn how to balance a checkbook so is it really economics.

Anyway, my group consisting of my friends, how I got that lucky I still don't know, but it sure made the class more interesting. Sophia E*s, Allison R*n, Emma H*y, Kylee L*h, and Me. I enjoyed the class, but I've always been better at baking than at cooking, since you can't really experiment in baking, which is nice, I want to know what my food will taste like, while I'm making it/ I'm not here for 3 hours of work than hating the product, I already go to school on the daily.

This particular day's meal was Chicken with lime rice, which I'm sure you understand my apprehension to cooking chicken, seeing as salmonella is a pretty bad bacteria (Or virus, the details aren't important) that I wouldn't appreciate acquiring. So my trust was in the hands of Allison, who I'm pretty sure only ate fruit snacks for the entirety of middle school, Sophia, a vegetarian since age 8, and Emma, who I think we were all hoping could pull this off.

Chicken isn't that hard to make, but after finishing the rice and lime portion of the meal, things got pretty boring as you can probably tell seeing as we went on an expedition, for the exclusive purpose of eating limes. I still don't understand middle schoolers, and I was one not that long ago, the disparity between Sophomore Me™ and Eighth Grader Me™ is just, a lot, y'know.

But going through your first phone does tend to bring up a lot of memories, so a text just of a picture of a lime, in a seemingly fancy restaurant, is an entire story, which I enjoyed telling, very much.

Yo always forget how much happened, when you're done with it, but open up one memory and suddenly you're reminiscing all the way back to 4th grade, which you can barely remember, but the smell of Morgan's red and white, gray on most days, mushroom eraser, is a very distinct memory.

I'm still shocked when anything over 2 years old is brought back with clarity as if I recorded it, the mind works in mysterious ways, I guess, but I'm not a neurosurgeon.

But yeah, Limes, right.

Or was it middle school.

I took Algebra II/Trigonometry which isn't even a slightly difficult class, compared to ever trying to remember what anything was like.

So yeah, Middle School.