The Rewarded | Teen Ink

The Rewarded

March 13, 2016
By MalikTarik PLATINUM, St. Louis, Missouri
MalikTarik PLATINUM, St. Louis, Missouri
36 articles 1 photo 5 comments

Favorite Quote:
"One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world."
-Malala Yousafzai


After a long busy day to learn and play, it is finally time to rest. I sit on my designated spot waiting for my mind to go black in the midst of the dimmed rainbow toy room.


Countless seconds of darkness consume my mind after my eyes are already taken into its grip and a light touch of what seemed to be a wisp of misled air pads on my back along with an inaudible whisper that barely reaches my ears leaving only the sounds of moving lips and tongue flowing to my brain. My eyes open to a clearing blur of the room. I notice a few select others looking around as I try to understand what is going on.
Finally, we notice the old off white-skinned lady with a loose ruffled soft brown bun just sat down on a table by the alphabet rug where the windows let in streams of white light from the sun. She signals with a waving hand and a smiling face to come.


I notice some of my newly made friends have been among those chosen and I wonder what awaits us, so I slowly rise from my blue plastic chair from my small wooden desk and begin to head carefully towards the path to her quietly trying not to disturb the other resting untouched students.


I go past all of the tired mindless daydreamers until I reach the lady who sits down as the light streamed out from the windows all around embracing her thin nearly bony form. Her daddy long leg fingers crawl into a bag of yellow, green, blue, red, orange and brown. Out she pulls a few colors and puts a few hard colored knick-knacks into my hand clacking as they crash down onto each other. She instructs me to go back to my seat after giving me the small novelty.


As I sit down, I simply observe the colorful beads I was given although I am not really sure what to do with them. I notice a little white “m” written on one side of most of them wondering what it means. I get tired of holding the beads clueless of what to do, so I look around stretching out to my tallest possible height to look past resting neighbors behind and beyond me noticing all of those chosen are chewing and eating while their beads disappeared. It seems that these must be edible…


I put a bead into my mouth and tried to chew it. First, it slips out of the grinding pressure of my teeth into the crevice between my gum and lips, but then I finally crunch down on the hard shell to come into a softer flesh inside. The little trinket is definitely rewarding as I let my warm saliva melt it while its sweetness and dark heavy flavor spread over the surface of my tongue.


Another bead and one more and another pop into my mouth. As the flavors swirl and spiral down into a funnel with the lasting bits of flavor going away leaving their reminiscent flavor on their trail out of my mouth.


I wish I could have another little bead to eat, but I have eaten them all up. I simply smirk as I look around at our resting neighbors knowing that they were unknowledgeable of the little secret that we chosen ones would keep from them.


The author's comments:

I wrote this piece about an experience I had in my kindergarten class when I was pretty much just adjusting to the school system and growing confidence in becoming a part of it. This experience was also the first time I ever had M&Ms.


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