#god imagine thinking shorter times filming = 100% better working conditions

[delicatebluebirdruins]

the world if we got more episodes in a show again

[creativitytoexplore]

Announcing the 2020 Winners of the Insider Prize https://ift.tt/2DNkREu

For the last three years, American Short Fiction has sponsored a contest for incarcerated writers in Texas. A group of writers at the Connally Unit, in Kenedy, Texas, came up with the name: The Insider Prize. Each year we get dozens of essays and short stories from men and women in prisons and jails across the state, some handwritten and others produced on typewriters. They tell stories about their lives before prison, about the conditions inside, and about the many places their imaginations take them.

This year’s award is marked, like so much in our world these days, by tragedy.

Back in April, as we prepared to share the good news with the winners and finalists, we learned that finalist Timothy Bazrowx had died at a prison hospital after testing positive for COVID-19. He was 63. As the virus continues to rip through shockingly ill-prepared prisons and jails, the men and women inside remain especially vulnerable. Bazrowx knew this—he wrote to one correspondent that in prison, “sickness runs like a crazy horse through a flower bed.”

Through three books and countless shorter pieces, Bazrowx had cultivated an incisive, vivid, and frequently hilarious style, which he didn’t abandon even as his home became a deathtrap. As the virus spread in his prison, officers threatened to punish his peers for going shirtless in a common area. “The world is dying and these bastards want us to be fully dressed to see it happen,” he wrote. “Geewiz.”

It is with his unique spirit, of smiling while speaking truth to power, of finding joy in the face of horrors both natural and manmade, that we present this year’s winners, along with Bazrowx’s own submission.

The winners were selected by guest judge Justin Torres, whose award-winning 2011 novel We the Animalshas proven popular among writers behind bars.

In the fiction category, Torres selected “That Place on Daniel Island” by F.R. Martinez. Martinez also won in the fiction category last year, when Joyce Carol Oates selected his story “Mother’s Son.” This new piece is told entirely in dialogue, and Torres wrote that it “feels so alive, to not just the syntax and rhythms of everyday speech, but also to the very need for dialogue itself. Talking is a way to both dig up trouble, and put it to rest. The two characters are talking from two very different sides of a shared experiences—marriage, incarceration—and the effect is quite moving.”

In the memoir category, Torres selected “The Promise” by Steven Perez. “What I loved most about this piece,” Torres wrote, is “that the story moves beyond the narrative of the gruesome attack that serves as the inciting incident to raise important questions about witnessing, responsibility, codes of conduct, failed guardianship—all the systemic issues that foster and allow for prison violence. It is tremendously well written.”

The memoir runner-up this year was “My Time Paradox,” by Jacob Jills, which Torres called a “real achievement in prose style” that “provoked an eerie claustrophobic feeling while reading.” The fiction runner-up this year was “Classic Rock,” by John Rodgers, which Torres called “troubling, funny, and hazed with a kind of dreamlike nostalgia.”

We hope you enjoy this year’s winners.

—Maurice Chammah & Emily Chammah

  So I said to her ‘Let’s go to that place over on Daniel Island where we used to go.’ And she said ‘What place?’ I said ‘You know, that place that was kinda like a beach bar or something.’ ‘Beach bar? I don’t know what you’re talking about. You mean the bagel place? The one that had the everything bagels?’ ‘No, no. Well— is that still there? We used to go there.’ ‘They only open for breakfast and lunch. Not dinner.’ So I said ‘I mean that place that had the jukebox with that Billy Joel song we like.’ ‘Juke box?’ ‘And there was a bar in the front, even though it was always half empty. They had good burgers.’ ‘You don’t mean the hotel? The restaurant in the hotel where we went with Nick and his wife before they broke up?’ ‘Damn. That must be like twenty years ago. No. Is that still there? I don’t even remember how to get there.’

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‘Well, I’ll drive.’ ‘I sure would like to go to the other place though. I used to think of it when I was down for some reason.’ ‘Really. Were the burgers THAT good?’ ‘No. I mean they were good but—I don’t know I just liked the place because it was so laid back, so peaceful, so—Charleston. I mean, I know there was no beach there on Daniel Island, but when I remembered that place it felt like there shoulda been one nearby, like right down the road or something. It’s hard to explain, but when you’re locked up a place like that just seems like heaven, you know? To be away from everything. . . ’ ‘There’s that other place on Daniel Island over there by where we used to live.’ ‘That’s right. I forgot we lived on the island for a few months when they were building our house.’ ‘Over there in the mall, where the Ross was,’ she said. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That’s gone now. It’s been gone for like–I don’t know—ten years?’ ‘Ten years��’ ‘You were gone a long time.’ ‘Yeah. I barely recognized that part over there when we come into our neighborhood off the highway. That used to be a Piggly Wiggly over there.’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘What happened to the Blimpie’s?’ ‘That’s gone. Been gone.’ ‘I was down a long time, but I bet that place on Daniel Island is still there. Maybe with a different name and a different owner.’ ‘Maybe. But don’t have to go there. There’s lots of new places. There’s one by Folly Beach. I’ve gone there with Tina and Rosemary.’ ‘Rosemary?’ ‘Yeah. She used to work with me at Bosch, remember? She retired before I did.’ ‘I didn’t think you were friends with people from Bosch, I mean except for Dennis.’ ‘Dennis died two or three years ago. I don’t remember exactly when. You know how memory is. I didn’t go to the funeral. It was too sad.’ ‘I remember you told me he died. . . on the phone.’ ‘You’ve been gone a long time, baby.’ ‘I feel like Rip Van Winkle. I used to hear people in prison talk about their lives outside. I’m talking about people with fifteen and twenty year sentences. They had a long way to go, and they’d just started. I used to wanna say to them: listen, forget that life, man. It’s over. But I did it too, talked about my life, you know, with you and the kids here. But that was at first. After a couple of years, I stopped that. I didn’t talk to anybody. What for? People left. Or they got transferred to other prisons. Or they died. What was the use of trying to make friends, to get close to anybody.’ ‘You used to talk to me on the phone about your ‘friends.’’ ‘That was nothing. Just people I met. People to hang out and bullshit with, people to bitch about the conditions and whatever was going on. There’s no real friendship in there. The place is like a bus station, or an airport. Anyway, it’s illegal to contact other ‘felons.’’ ‘Is that what you are now? A felon?’ ‘No. I’m still me. I’m still the same guy you married.’ ‘No. You’ve changed.’ ‘You’ve changed, too. I mean, c’mon, thirteen years. I swear. I thought I was gonna die in there. I had one celli who was a psycho, another one was a drug addict, another one almost killed me with B.O. Another was a pest, always begging for attention, bugging me with his problems. And then you had that stroke. I thought you were gonna die. The kids wouldn’t answer their phones.’ ‘I know. That must’ve been terrible.’ ‘More terrible than you think. I thought I’d have nobody left when I got out, you know? And then I used to think you didn’t forgive me—for what I did.’ ‘I was angry. I still am. You fucked up our lives.’ ‘I think you need to put some of the blame for that on the wonderful government.’ ‘No. I put it on you. What you did was wrong.’ ‘Not thirteen years worth of wrong! For God’s sake! I didn’t kill anybody!’ ‘You should have known better.’ ‘How could I? It’s not like they tell people what kind of sentences they’re giving out.’ ‘You should’ve known. Somebody smart like you should’ve known. What you were doing. . . didn’t you ever think there were consequences?’ ‘Okay. Right. Whatever. I just felt like all of you just let me rot in there. That if I died no one would care. I mean sometimes it was months before I heard from any of you.’ ‘You think it was easy for us? Paying the bills, keeping things running, ignoring all the people that kept telling me I should divorce you, that you were no good. It was no picnic, all right?’ So I said to her ‘Okay. Well. . . can we go to that place on Daniel Island? It was nice there. I remember we used to drink Coronas under one of the umbrellas in the tables on the patio.’ She was quiet for a minute, and then she said ‘Oh! THAT place. The one with the patio furniture outside.’ ‘Yeah! That’s it!’ ‘It closed down. About six years ago.’

—

Cuban-born writer and composer F.R. Martinezimmigrated to the U.S. as a result of the Cuban Revolution. He grew up in Miami then moved to New York City to attend the Juilliard School where he studied with David Diamond and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree. He went on to compose music for film, television, radio, and theater. He is the recipient of two Emmys (in conjunction with the writing team at Children’s Television Workshop, currently Sesame Workshop), and a Grammy for the Sesame Street album Elmopalooza in 1998, on which his song “Mambo I, I, I” is performed by Gloria Estefan. He worked with several other notables such as Cindy Lauper, Celia Cruz, Tito Puente, Trini Lopez, and various Latino music stars of the late twentieth century. In 1998, along with writer Luis Santeiro, he was the recipient of the Richard Rodgers Award offered by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, for the musical Barrio Babies. He worked for Disney on the show “Handy Manny” as a composer, completing background music and songs for 100 shows. “Handy Manny” was also nominated for an Emmy in 2009. With the Charleston Symphony Orchestra he worked on various projects including one for Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish fame. He’s been creating poetry and fiction since the age of twelve and has only returned to a more serious involvement with writing in recent years. In 2016, his poem “300 Min” received an Honorable Mention from PEN America. In the past five years, he has completed over a hundred poems and five novels as well as a number of short stories. He is looking to publish more fiction and poetry and would be grateful for sample copies of literary journals and submission guidelines. For his mailing address please contact insiderprize[at]americanshortfiction.org.

  Two days ago, ATX, a five-foot-two pallid hispanic prisoner on our cell block in his mid- to late-twenties, got his throat slit with a razor from ear to ear. I was at the law library when it happened. I came back, and the officers were locking us all up in our cells while three prisoner janitors mopped blood off the floor. The bright sun and the smell of fresh air seemed miles behind me.

ATX had had a fistfight in the dayroom with Bubba, a fifty-sevenish bald-headed five-foot-seven clean shaven black man with another thirty years in prison, before I left to the law library. I caught the end of that fight when I came back to the cell block after lunch.

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Seeing Bubba exchange punches with ATX puzzled me because since I had moved in to the cell block two weeks before, Bubba had been polite, helpful, and respectable. He would life coach some of the men on the cell block. He was also an expert tailor. He had recently hemmed up my visitation pants. And I had been helping him identify some legal problems he had with his conviction. He complained about misidentification. I had written down some case citations for him so he could look into them.

ATX had only been on the cell block for about four days, but he too had been laid back and respectable. He and Bobby, who lived two cells down from ATX, had been exchanging ideas about God and the Bible.

The hispanic and black gang members in the dayroom (Tango Blast, Bloods, and Crips) were unsettled. There’s an unwritten G-Code on this building that the youngsters do not fight with older prisoners. ATX was violating that code. Bubba and ATX had had some kind of falling out in line in the chow hall. Bubba had accidentally bumped into ATX. ATX said, “You must think I’m some kinda ho!”

Bubba’s from the old school. He spent years in lockup for killing one of his cell mates. He couldn’t overlook ATX’s hostility.

ATX said, “If you fucked up about it, we can get under the TV and get that.” So they fought under the  TV, and ATX got a good hit in and busted Bubba’s lip. After the fight, ATX kept bringing the issue up to other men on the cell block out loud. In doing so, he kept the fire burning. For the next three hours, Bubba told the men he wanted to cut ATX.

Those men tried over and over to talk Bubba out of it. Bubba wouldn’t listen. His mind was set. To make matters worse, with Bubba’s old school penitentiary mentality comes the idea that once you say you’re gonna do something , it’s like making  a promise. And you gotta follow through with it. You gotta keep your word. Even if it doesn’t make any sense. Even on some shit like this. Never mind the fact that Bubba’s sister was talking to him about hiring a parole lawyer for him. That’s the old school penitentiary mentality. That’s what this system does to you.

Twenty years in prison is enough for a man to learn his lesson. Anything after that pushes you to the limit. The point of no return. If you’re not strong enough mentally, physically, and emotionally, the system turns you into a fully programmed machine. Bubba had reached that point.

These days, no one expects you to keep that kind of promise. Instead, they try to talk you out of it. The younger generation of experienced prisoners have to counsel the older, more experienced, more traumatized lifers. We have to carry the burden of trying to talk these men out of keeping those kinds of promises.

My neighbor Rudy was sitting next to ATX on the bench. Rudy told ATX, “Watch out because that old school’s gonna try to shank you.” ATX didn’t listen. He fell asleep on the bench while sitting down in front of the TV in the dayroom. Bubba snuck up behind ATX and slit his throat ear to ear.

ATX stood up and started walking around the dayroom talking shit. “I’m ready to die in here!” Blood leaked out of his neck and soaked into his white T-shirt. The gash on his Adam’s apple was wide enough and deep enough to stick the tip of your pinky into all the way past your pinky nail. “Somebody give me a blade!” No one did.

Yesterday, after Rudy and I finished working out, we got into a conversation under the stairs of the cell block about what happened. Me, Rudy, and Bobby. Rudy stands six-foot-one. He’s lanky, but physically fit. A hispanic thug out of San Antonio who recently told me that he used to inject into his veins a half an ounce of meth every day before he came to prison. He’s thirty years old. He has the San Antonio Spur emblem in the middle of his chest with Aztec Indian art all over the rest of his upper back. He will discharge a four-year sentence in eight months, and he complains that his lawyer fucked him over. His modus operandi is car theft rings.

Bobby is a five-foot-three white boy in his early forties with the body of a middleweight weight lifter. He’s got fifteen years in on a ninety-nine-year sentence for bank robbery. His brother-in-law testified against him at his trial. He’s a recent revert to Christianity and a recovering alcoholic with salt and pepper hair. His sister and two of his nieces were shot and killed in the mass church shooting at the baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, in 2017. His nephew was shot five times and lived. Another niece looked into the eyes of the killer and lived without a single gunshot wound. He told me yesterday that when his sister and the kids got shot, his sister covered his nieces with her body to protect them. He said, “She tried to cover their mouths so they wouldn’t make any noise. My sister was bigger than me. She wasn’t huge, but she was big boned.”

Me, I’m forty-one years old. Chicano brown skin. Thirteen years in on a sixty-year sentence with a murder conviction under the law of parties.

Rudy was sitting on the bottom flight of the stairs. He said he saw Bubba coming. He got up from the bench and shied away. He said, “I got up and left.” He cracked a slight smile. He had a shadow of guilt in his eyes. He looked at me and shrugged his shoulders.

Bobby’s lips took the shape of a seagull in the distant sky back home in Corpus Christi, at the beach on North Padre Island. I saw parentheses at each end of his lips. His eyelids formed a straight line and almost halfway shut. His eyebrows curved up toward each other. He looked at Rudy with disappointment. Bobby said, ‘How would you like it if I got up and left you there to get your throat slit?”

Rudy said, “I told him to watch out. And what did he do? He went to sleep. Shit, Old School could’ve cut me! If I’d have got in, it would’ve started all kinds of shit. He shouldn’t have been fighting with that old school. And he should’ve listened to me when I warned him.”

I said, “He should’ve stayed in the cell. He was already in there. He shouldn’t have come back out.”

Bobby said, “I thought about trying to make peace between them. We all ate on the same table at chow. But Bubba was already with that mindset. He probably would have come after me. You saw the way he got after his own people for trying to get involved. I could’ve said something or tried to do something to prevent it.” He told us that Bubba had big-faced ATX in the chow hall. He concluded that he and Rudy had cowered by not intervening.

Unsure of what to say, I took a deep breath and rubbed my head. I looked down at my brown skin; at my threadbare tennis shoes; at the snake and dragon wrapped around my leg that I paid a thousand dollars for twenty years ago during the cocaine-dealing chapter of my life, at Axis Tattoo shop, in downtown Corpus Christi across from the Greyhound bus station, before U.S. District Judge Janice Graham Jack sent me to federal prison, where I lost my wife Iris to cocaine, meth, Xanax, and other men. I can still hear her in 2001, eighteen years ago, behind limo tint, singing to me in the passenger seat of the red Grand Am I bought her while I drove through palm trees past the million-dollar mansions on Ocean Drive on the way to our house with the sparkling salt water bay to our left. Serenity, our then one-year-old baby girl, our pageant prize and trophy winner, sat in the middle of the back seat in her car sucking on the nipple of an empty Enfamil bottle. I can still see Serenity’s long eyelashes curling up and her black button eyes, blinking. I can feel Iris’s smooth milky skin at my fingertips; her long reddish brown hair in between my fingers. I can still hear her sober million-dollar voice in my head. The only woman who’s ever called me handsome. “How will I live without you?” The song from Con Air. Her voice echoes in my memories. I remember thinking, My life is complete.

Bobby said, “We’re supposed to stop things like that from happening.”

Rudy said, “Fuck that!”

I said, “We gotta be prudent in what we do. It’s like being in a war. We gotta get out of here alive.”

Later on, I reflected on the conversation. I thought, It’s like a war in many respects. But not all. ATX was not a fellow soldier. We didn’t even know him. And he violated too many prison principles. But does that make him less human? Does that make him deserving of death? We gotta make sure that we get out of here alive. That’s a duty we owe our families and ourselves. If you were there, what would you have done? And don’t tell me you’d have told the officers. You don’t do that in prison. If you do, then you might be the one getting your throat slit. Besides, the officers want us to kill each other. Not all of them are like that, but it always seems like the worst ones are around at the worst times. They won’t do anything for us until the deed is done. Then they’ll throw it in our faces as if we proved them right.

Weeks later while I sat in my cell thinking about how to end this story, I thought about promises. How promises are so easily broken. I remembered being in federal prison and promising myself that I’d never come back to prison. I was released. Yet here I sit. I write. Some promises you just don’t keep.

—

Steven Reynaldo Perezwas born in Corpus Christi, Texas, on July 5, 1978. He is a member of the Pen City Writers inside team at the John B. Connally state prison in Kenedy, Texas, which was established and is led and taught by author Deb Olin Unferth of the University of Texas at Austin. Steven is a self-taught paralegal; a staunch prisoner advocate against unlawful convictions and sentences and mass incarceration; and an avid defender of prisoner rights. In 2019, he earned a creative writing fellowship from the U.T. Austin English Department. He is in his 14th year of a 60-year sentence.

  Back in the age of the dinosaurs, which most consider around 1964:

My family and I lived in a small town called China, Texas. We had a huge rice farm/ranch operation with an average cattle count of fifteen-hundred head. We also had our cow horses (around twenty) and two Shetland ponies.

I was, at the time, around eight years old. My brother was eleven months younger than myself.

In my family, there were six kids, and at this time of year, in the dog-days of summer, us kids were not in school and pretty much had to make our own adventures manifest.

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Mom had a new baby, another girl, and now there were four of them, with just the two boys, so the girls pretty much stayed in the house playing with Barbie dolls that had broken knees, for I couldn’t figure out how they worked. So, to make a long story short, my brother and I were pretty much exiled to the outside of the house to keep the peace. Besides, mom breast-fed, and we certainly didn’t want to see that; it was better this way because we got to play with our many dogs, and we killed water moccasins, which were in abundance because of the small rice field we had by the house. So my brother and I were guards of the ole homestead, terrors incarnate in the bodies of two rambunctious small boys.n other words, we were normal, mischievously under-supervised little boys doing what we considered fun.

My stepfather worked the big fields, and we had some chores that took place mainly if we were being watched closely, or if it had to do with our horses. We liked our horses.

We liked going out into the next pasture. Our house was surrounded on three sides with pastures, and rice fields.

The horses, or most of them, liked it when we went there. A couple of them always got special treatment. Blaze was my regular riding horse. A standard quarter horse mare with a white face and white socks, roan in color, a lustrous red, she knew that when she saw me, she was in for a good curry-combin’ and brushing, along with the sugar cubes that we gave those horses that would come to us.

Most were on to us. We went in the pasture with an empty bucket making them think we had sweet oats for them. When they got fooled a few times, only the sugar-addicted horses would stay for their rewards of sugar cubes, and yes, sweet oats, for my brother and I liked playing tricks on the horses. We only wanted to curry-comb the horses that liked us.

Of course, we made sure the water trough was filled. Playing with water in the hot summer days was fine with us, and when we got wet, who cared? That was our job.

Now the bigger horses were fun to mess with, but it was rare that we could saddle or ride one of the cow ponies without the help of our stepfather. Even though we rode them a lot, they weren’t kid horses, and when the saddles came out, it was work time for them, and they knew this. We did ride bareback at times, but this story isn’t about that.

We had two Shetland ponies, which this story is about, for they were the kid horses. They were for the girls, but we rode them more than anyone.

SugarBee was one of the most genial of creatures, and very tolerant of us. We liked her, she never tried to bite us. She liked sugar cubes, and to be combed as well as saddled and rode.

I don’t know where she came from, but she was such a sweetheart that even with two miscreants around her, her disposition rubbed off on us, and we always gave her special attention.

Frisky, though, was another matter. Frisky was an un-castrated cattle stud with a painted hide. He could have almost been an Indian Pony had his legs been longer. What he didn’t have in height, he had in malignity.

He would bite, he would kick, and step on feet with sharp little hooves as well as buck you off. . .if you could get on him that is. He was won by our neighbor during a raffle at a Catholic church fundraiser. When our neighbor came over to our place and just gave this critter to us to be rid of it, we knew that there had to be a good reason. I had to ear-hustle his conversation with my stepfather.

The neighbor was explaining how mean this pony was. He was also telling him that this horse didn’t like the sulky wagon, which basically is a seat with two wheels in it. You see harness racing with these wagons.

It seems Frisky waited for our neighbor to hook up this wagon, then, after he got in, the pony went into “stupid-gear” when the reins were snapped over his back. Frisky went to kicking, and bucking as well as snapping like a mad Chihuahua, then kicking the buggy until the neighbor fell off. The pony then kicked the light-weight wagon over his head, then backed out of the harness. He ran down old Highway 90, causing a cussing, winded foot race with the neighbor. Frisky now became ours, and with rascally glee I ran to tell my brother the good news.

Time would go on, and the summer dragged on. We had got Frisky in the spring, and got him used to us. I even rode him bareback, and was bit a couple of times, as well as had my toe stepped on, but he would come to us readily enough.

We kept these horses in the small field with the horse barn that had hundreds of mesquite and Chinaberry trees — which by the way, is where China, Texas gets its name.

One morning before it got too hot, my brother and I, like each day during the summer, were off and running full tilt into our shenanigans.

Being met at our front door by our mismatched pack of dogs (somewhere around fifteen  of them) we headed off to the horse field.

Dogs were running all around, chasing rabbits, and finding snakes and killing them. My brother and I were just accepted members of the pack.

We went into the horse pasture, grabbed the bucket, and were able to get SugarBee to us, then Blaze, but the others weren’t falling for these two human pups’ tricks. It made us no difference, because we were just out and about trying to stay away from the stupid girls that always wanted to dress us up in dresses. No sir, we was off and running because both my brother and I knew to get caught by that female horde might mean my other ear was getting a needle driven through it. It was safer out with the snakes, nutria rats, gators, horses, and such.

When we had finished messing with SugarBee and Blaze, we saw Frisky wandering slowly toward us. I had a couple of sugar cubes left, so when he got to us we were able to comb him, which he liked, and he smelled the sweet oak bucket, but we hadn’t gotten that far yet.

Now horses aren’t known for their proper etiquette, so while we were treating this mean little fart with kindness, he of all things decided to pee on us. He just flowed the ole whiz-wand out and peed like a racehorse on us, causing it to splash all over both my and my brother’s feet and legs.

“Oh no you didn’t!”

Yes he did, and now my brother and I backed away from the flash flood this guy caused.

Oh yeah, the horns came out on both my brother’s and my head. In fields like this what we called crawdad holes were everywhere. Small towers of hard mud-balls that crayfish have erected were everywhere, and ready ammo for two pissed off, and pissed on, boys.

We, of course, started throwing these things at the pony. I know it was wrong, but being seven and eight years old in 1964, we didn’t care, for retribution was at hand.

The pony must have held all that water through the night just for us. He continued on while we threw small clods of mud at him surely aiming for the offending member.

What we didn’t see was that menacing look and evil, what looked like a smile I later remember seeing; which, come to think of it, looked more like a snarl.

With his ears laying back now, as we got closer to throw these mud clods, that little fart’s back feet started flying up. He kicked me in the arm, throwing me to the ground.

My brother was close to a barbed wire fence, and he got kicked over and over as he went under the fence. I jumped up, and found an old rotten stick, then whacked him, breaking the stick. He then started chasing me with blood in his eyes, kicking and snapping at my butt with those sharp horse teeth while I tried to find a faster gear to get in.

My brother chased after the horse, or Shetland pony, which is what he was. He grabbed the tail, getting another kick in the leg, while the horse spun around, I yelled for my brother to climb a Chinaberry tree that was close by. I also headed for our ethereal heaven.

This heathenish fiend saw both my brother and I was out of reach now, so he started cropping grass under the tree. My brother and I could just look at each other and laugh.

Oh no, it wasn’t over though. Each time the horse edged away, we would try to sneak down the tree, and Frisky would lay his ears back, then start bucking, and running back and forth under the tree, thus keeping us stranded up that Chinaberry tree for at least two hours, until he finally wandered away. We got down and ran out of the pasture. I wanted to get even with him for doing that to us, but he had got our attention.

We never threw dirt clods at him again, and we seemed to have some deep rooted respect for each other. I would ride him, and he would bite me, or step on my foot, and I’d push him off, limp a little, then get on. I kept a small switch handy.

We would leave a year or so later because Mom was looking for another life. She took us with her, but I’ll never forget when that wild pony ruled the day.

—

Timothy Bazrowx grew up in China, Texas, and his writing about life in prison and out was published by The Marshall Project, Prisons Foundation, and Uncaptive Voices. In April 2020, he died due to complications from COVID-19.

  About the Organizers & this Year’s Judge

Emily Chammah and Maurice Chammah are assistant editors at American Short Fiction and co-direct the Insider Prize. Emily is a Fulbright Fellow, and the winner of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. Her fiction can be found in The Common. Maurice is a staff writer at The Marshall Project, where he reports on the U.S. criminal justice system. His first book, Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty will be published by Crown Books in January.

Justin Torres has published short fiction in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, Tin House, The Washington Post, Glimmer Train, Flaunt, and other publications, as well as non-fiction pieces in publications like The Guardian and The Advocate. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Justin’s novel We the Animals has been translated into fifteen languages and was recently adapted into a film. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for five Independent Spirit Awards. He was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library. The National Book Foundation named him one of the 2012’s 5 under 35. He was the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, a Rolón Fellowship in Literature from United States Artists, and the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. He lives in Los Angeles, where he is an Assistant Professor of English at UCLA.

[avecorviidae]

Fic: Aubade - Chapter Six

Fandom: Mob Psycho 100 Rating: M Relationship(s): Kageyama Ritsu/Suzuki Shou Word Count: 3834

Ao3 Link

Rye street is… nice, he thinks. A few apartment buildings, some small businesses, a convenience store, a couple of fast food takeaway joints, even a little cafe with a fence around the outside tables, looking like it’s straight out of some soft indie film. It’s all pretty average, which at first was honestly more than Ritsu had dared to hope for. The landlord of the building is a fairly stout man with perpetually ruddy pink cheeks, and he stands shorter than even Shou, much to Shou’s obvious delight. He shows the two of them around the building, (five floors, he tells them like it’s some sort of selling point, I’ll show you gentlemen the one you were looking at on the third, of course, but wouldn’t you like to see some of our empty ones on the top floor? Only a little extra rent, I assure you, and the view is–

No, thank you, Ritsu interrupts before Shou can say something decidedly less polite, we’re just interested in the one we saw online.) It’s hardly their first choice, and unless there’s some great disaster, it almost certainly won’t be the place they end up living. It’s a little cramped, a little run-down, and even looking around now at the flaking paint on the exposed pipes, the suspiciously dark patch on the ceiling of the hallway (is that mould?), Ritsu could see quite a few maintenance issues in their future, if they ended up here. Besides, it’s too far away from the school to walk, and not even nearly close enough to a bus stop for Ritsu’s lazy ass. The only reason they’re actually visiting in the first place is because, well, he can’t help but feel like he needs a test run, a general idea of how these things work before anything’s actually at stake. Figure out what to look for now, before they end up in a perfectly nice place with no air conditioning and a toilet in the living room.

He tunes back into reality just in time to grab Shou’s shoulder, barely stopping him from crashing right into the landlord. Apparently both of them had zoned out of his little extravagant speech, so they hadn’t realized they were coming to a stop at one of the doors.

Jeez, looks like someone had a nice game of hallway golf, he notes with vague amusement. Maybe Dad’s client was here with his stapler.

He wonders, if they were seriously considering this place, what would be an absolute dealbreaker, because he has the somewhat foreboding feeling that this place is going to get worse than that dent in the door.

The landlord (Mr. Amori? No, that was his year three teacher. Anami? Anami. Maybe,) seems to think that if he’s loud and fast enough, maybe, just maybe they won’t notice. Playing dumb, he follows him into the apartment, trailing a few steps behind Shou. He doesn’t have to feign polite interest as he looks around the main room, though he does have to stifle a smile at the way Shou immediately bounds off like a dog let off its leash, one moment poking his head through the curtains to look out of the little window, the next rummaging through the empty kitchen cabinets. He’s ooohing and aaahing every now and again, and tossing questions in the landlord’s direction which are both completely irrelevant to the apartment and in too much of a rapid fire succession for the poor man to even think about answering.

Probably-Anami is watching Shou with almost frightened bewilderment, so Ritsu takes pity on him and starts asking real questions.

“There’s AC and heating, right?” The man smiles gratefully at him, clearly glad to be on familiar ground.

“Yes, yes, of course! Air conditioning, heating, a refrigerator, an oven, even a microwave! Well, the microwave may have some, some very minor issues, but I can assure you…” I asked what utilities there were, not appliances, dumbass, he thinks, letting his eyes glaze over as the man continues to talk at him. He tries to think what questions he’s supposed to ask next, his fingers itching at his side to reach for the folded piece of paper in his pocket. Did it count as ridiculous, planning this far ahead, looking up what questions you were supposed to ask your landlord? Shou had called him uptight, but jokingly, and it’s not as if he’s much of a standard to go by anyways, Mister Mad-Dash-Across-LAX-Because-He-Didn’t-Check-His-Flight-Times.

He waits and nods along until Probably-Anami seems to be probably finished speaking, and then starts on a small barrage of questions as they come flooding back to him like a set of definitions memorized the night before a test, and he takes incredible satisfaction in the pure anxiety on Anami’s face every time he’s asked a question that he’d almost definitely wanted to avoid.

Are utilities included in the rent? Apparently not, that’s an additional fee, joy oh joy.

What are the circumstances that allow the landlord to let himself into the property? There are none, and he can come in at any time. Well, then.

How often are the locks changed? Hm, it seems that since the last tenants left so suddenly there just hasn’t been time to get the locks changed, how reassuring. Are there quiet hours? Anami is halfway through the beginning of an answer when Ritsu feels light tapping on his shoulder, and by the time he’s turned around, Shou is already half-dragging him into the nearby bathroom, ostensibly to show him something, although the manically delighted grin on his face says otherwise.

The bathroom is disgustingly dirty, Ritsu notes absently, scuffed white tiles and black grout, some ominous damp mush gathering in the line between the tiny bathtub and the floor. Sure, he wasn’t one to leap at bathroom duty in his dorms or at home, but christ, he’d never let it get this bad. It was probably more on the last tenants than the landlord, but did he not clean before he showed the place to prospective tenants? Had they left yesterday, or something? “So,” Shou starts, and then pauses, clearly hoping to build up anticipation for his big reveal. “So,” Ritsu echoes, crossing his arms over his chest and letting his tone lilt up into an expectant question.

Shou’s grin widens fractionally. “Those ‘minor issues’ with the microwave?” He leans closer into Ritsu’s space, and when he’s speaking again, it’s in a conspiratorial whisper. “Cockroach crispies.” “Augh, no!” He gives Shou exactly what he wants, letting disgust colour his voice and scrunching his face as Shou collapses into hysterical laughter.

“No, no, nope absolutely not,” Ritsu says, making for the door, “we’re done here.” “Aw, you’re telling me you don’t want to see it for yourself?” Shou is obviously only fake disappointed, his tone more teasing than anything, because apparently he knows Ritsu far too well for his own good.

“One look. Then we’re leaving.”

-

Their second appointment on Barley Avenue is not much better.

It was a little after eleven by the time they’d finally managed to worm their way out of Anami’s grasp, and the first thing they did was make a beeline for the nearest place that had food, some food literally any food, dear god why had they not thought to bring, god, like a granola bar or something.

Once Shou’s not allegedly starving to death, he’s back to full energy and he is ready to go, and he keeps weaving ahead of Ritsu on the street, his orange spikes disappearing into the crowd until he’s lost him completely. Ritsu might worry, but Shou always ends up trailing back within a few minutes, once he remembers that he has no actual idea where the bus stop is.

-

The landlady, Yamada Sachiko, is typically professional, with a soft yellow blouse and black pencil skirt and a clear plastic clipboard piled with neatly sorted paperwork held to her chest. Her hair is pulled into one of the strictest buns he’s ever seen, and it’s giving him a sympathy headache just to look at.

She’s waiting for them in the lobby of the building when they arrive, and he gives an appropriately polite greeting as she shakes his hand. There’s an uncomfortable pause after he pulls away, as her previously warm smile turns plastic and patronizing, and she seems to hesitate before holding out a hand for Shou to shake as well. Jeez, and she’s actually looking down at him, could she be any more like a teacher?

Admittedly, between the height, the hair, and the skinny jeans, Shou usually looks a good few years younger than he actually is. You certainly wouldn’t know from looking at him that he’s spent the last five or more years cleaning up his father’s messes, including dealing with whatever high-profile business associates he may have had.

Which is why it’s viscerally satisfying to see the slight shock on Yamada’s face when Shou straightens his shoulders, holds his head up to meet her eyes, shakes her hand firmly, and says with a saccharine smile, “Miss Yamada, a pleasure to meet you. Thank you so much for taking the time to show us around, we’ve been looking forward to it.” Ritsu’s not sure if he’s imagining a particular emphasis on we. It’s entirely an act, of course, and Ritsu can sense the hostility underneath it, even moreso once they all step into the elevator and the tension thickens between them all in the stale air. Yamada is shifting, somewhat uncomfortably, while Shou seems to be revelling in it. So, Shou’s decided to put on a show. Ritsu isn’t entirely sure why, yet, but he’s perfectly willing to play along.

The elevator pulls to a stop and Yamada leads them out into the hallway, never faltering as she strides across the thick patterned carpet, despite her insanely high heels.

While the other apartment building had given off the general atmosphere of a horrifying mutant hybrid between a dormitory and a prison, this place feels like a hotel, generically ornate carpets underfoot and not-quite-faded wallpaper on either side, interrupted by fancy lamps whose gold paint was peeling to reveal black metal underneath.

The smell of stale air freshener is making his nose itch.

Even so, he probably comes off as overeager with how quickly he steps into the apartment once Yamada unlocks the door, quickly making his way to the middle of the room and looking around.

This place had been his favourite of the ones they’d looked at online, and truth be told, he was already most of the way to sold on it. It had an open floor plan that left a nice amount of space without feeling empty, rich hardwood floors, a kitchen bigger than a matchbox, and god, did it ever have windows. Sunlight fell into the room in bits and pieces, dappling the kitchen counter through half-shuttered blinds, making the beige-ish couch and scratched up coffee table look more warm and rustic than worn and torn.

He hears Shou come in behind him, but surprisingly, he doesn’t wander off to explore like last time. Instead, he stays hovering at Ritsu’s elbow, looking around the apartment with an almost blank curiosity.

Yamada is clearly more practiced at this than Anami had been; she shows them around the main living space in a way that highlights its most attractive features, explains the utilities and appliances that come with the place with clinical objectivity that still manages to sound almost welcoming. All in all, it’s incredibly pleasant.

Ritsu has never been more uncomfortable in his life.

There’s something about the way the woman looks at him, a little too personal, a little too… intimate? Regardless, it’s putting him on edge, even as he plasters on a smile in return, asks cordially about the hours for the building’s laundry facilities, what forms the rent money is accepted in, about the security deposit.

She steps into his space, looks up at him. He can smell lavender, cloying and artificial, too strong to be anything but cheap perfume.

“Of course,” she says, with an alarming smile and a new undertone to her voice that Ritsu can’t identify and doesn’t want to, “you’ll be welcome to contact me at any time. I’d be happy to help.” “Uh,” Ritsu says eloquently, taking a half-step back. Too close, she’s too close for him to think. And then there’s sudden warmth at his side, and his right arm is looped around a set of —oh thank god, familiar— shoulders. Shou, he thinks, with a rush of relief. He hadn’t even really noticed him wander off, hadn’t missed him until he was back.

The physical closeness, that’s not unusual, but the way Shou is looking at him, head pressed back against Ritsu’s shoulder so that he can meet his eyes upside-down, a soft, dopey sort of smile on his face, well that’s– that’s not something he sees every day, and for good reason. They only do this when they need an out, and Ritsu knows an escape rope when he sees one. Shou’s aura embraces him like a safety blanket, but he can feel the defensiveness, the way it prickles at the edges, little hedgehog spines surrounding them protectively.

“Ritsu,” and it’s said pleadingly, softly, like Yamada isn’t standing right there, “Can we choose a bedroom already?” Ritsu lets himself relax, returns Shou’s smile with a small, exasperatedly affectionate one of his own. He slips his arm more snugly around Shou, makes to move towards the hallway leading to the bedrooms, then spares a cursory glance at Yamada, as if she’s an afterthought, rather than the main cause of his little panic. “If we could...?” he says, and it’s not a question, not really.

She nods sharply regardless, looking suitably ruffled, and without further ado Ritsu steers them as quickly as is appropriate into the hallway and into the first bedroom. The tension doesn’t fully slip from his shoulders until the door clicks shut behind them, and he slumps against it with a sigh. Shou follows his movement, and he hears him mutter “creep” half into shoulder.

“Mhm,” he mutters by way of agreement, scrubbing his free hand over his face. He didn’t think he was getting worked up over nothing, but he also couldn’t pinpoint exactly why Yamada made him uncomfortable. It wasn’t– it wasn’t overtly inappropriate, or rude, or flirtatious…

Wait, was it? The saccharine smiles, the too-close-for-comfort tour, the intimate tone of voice, the perfume, the– the flash of sudden recognition in her eyes when Shou had stepped in, the step backwards she’d taken and–

“Jesus, she was coming on to me, wasn’t she?”

There are a few moments of silence as Shou goes rigid against him, and then he collapses into fits of giggles, leaning his weight on Ritsu in earnest now as he muffles his laughter into Ritsu’s shirt.

Ritsu sighs, but as usual, there’s no real heart to it. That Ritsu has a tendency to miss those sorts of specific social cues is a given, and since they were kids, that Shou will help him out of those situations is one too. The one-year gap had stretched between them again, in that respect, and Ritsu reflects that he can certainly take being made fun of a little if it means he gets this again, Shou leaning into him and pulling him away from situations like this, his laugh making the discomfort and panic tight in the back of Ritsu’s throat dissipate like so many butterflies, well. Seems like a fair tradeoff to him.

-

They don’t last too long in that apartment after that. Arguably, Yamada would still rent to them, but Ritsu is feeling strange and shaky around her, too distracted to see the idealized apartment, keeps focusing on the threadbare curtains, the weird smudge on the sofa, the way some of the floorboards sort of bounce under his feet (didn’t his dad once say that meant they had water damage?) and frankly, it’s enough to turn him off the place entirely. Besides, Shou’s clearly made an enemy of the woman, and Ritsu can’t think of a single possible benefit of having a landlord that hates your guts.

On the bus, Shou looks distracted, harried, staring out of the window and not meeting his eyes. He looks exactly how Ritsu feels: I didn’t think it would be this hard.

Frankly, it shouldn’t be as draining as it is; they’ve looked at one place seriously, and one-and-a-quarter bad experiences does not a disaster make. Still, as Ritsu finds with all Adult Responsibilities, he can’t help but feel that it’s disproportionately difficult for what it actually is. He just wants for this day, no, this move to be done with, wants a bed in a new apartment with his best friend for him to collapse into and fall asleep already.

On impulse, he reaches out and grabs Shou’s hand, squeezes it once. “Third time’s the charm?” It’s as much to reassure himself as it is Shou.

Shou, for once in his life, doesn’t have anything to say beyond a quiet hum of agreement that’s almost lost in the constant muted sound of the engine, but the quick squeeze of fingers around his speaks volumes.

-

Whatever powers-that-be have been fucking with them all day have finally decided to let up, apparently.

Their third landlord, Nishigori, is the kind of man who seems to face the world with a genuine and gentle smile. He shows up a little less than ten minutes late to their appointment, and his explanation-cum-apology about his newborn triplets makes sense of the shadows under his eyes, the slightly rumpled effect of his clothes and hair, the fact that the man looks absolutely, utterly exhausted, and is somehow happy about it.

He seems to find Shou’s hyperactivity genuinely amusing, and he answers Ritsu’s questions informally, but honestly.

The apartment itself is smaller than the last one, with a bit more of an awkward layout; the front door leads into a straight hallway with doors on either side, leading to the living room, the bathroom, a couple of cupboards, and the bedrooms. Nishigori tells him which door leads to what, but Ritsu immediately forgets and finds himself lost, so he just follows the him into the living room. Shou, in his usual exploration mode, seems to have opted for trial and error, because he distantly hears two or three doors opening and closing before Shou finally pokes his head into the living room and strolls inside.

“Carpets in the bedrooms,” Shou reports to him, sounding impressed.

Oh, nice. Most of the apartment seems to be like the last one, darkish hardwood interrupted periodically by a rug, or sectioned off like the bathrooms and the kitchen into slate grey tile. A wooden-floored bedroom wouldn’t be a dealbreaker for him, but he’d definitely prefer carpet.

Interestingly enough, while nothing in the apartment is what he thought he’d wanted, it is in its own way shaping up to be ideal. It’s pretty sparsely furnished (IKEA, reads the final bullet point of the list in his back pocket, and won’t that be a shopping trip and a half,) but not enough to make the place feel empty. It seems like the white walls should be clinical, boring even, but as evening turns the sky grey Nishigori wanders around turning on lamps that seem to warm the rooms, make the empty spaces smaller, hell, makes the whole place homey. It doesn’t look like something out of a furniture catalog or a movie, particularly, but it looks soft, comfortable, lived in.

For the third time that day, he and Shou step into another room for a little private conference. For the first time that day, it’s not to shittalk about how completely fucking awful everything is.

They’ve moved into one of the bedrooms, the one with the blue-grey sheets on the bed and little lamps on the bedside table and the dresser, and Ritsu notes the plush of the tan carpet under his feet as he goes to sit on the bed. Shou plops down beside him and leans forward, elbows on his knees and chin in his palms. “I really like this place,” Shou says without preamble.

“Me too,” he replies, equally as frank.

He thinks, thinks, that Shou shares the same worry and hesitation as him: that he likes this place, that he’s ready to decide on this place, but that the feeling isn’t mutual. There’s a heavy silence as Ritsu tries to think of what to say, to test the waters.

“It doesn’t have to be now that we decide. I mean, we’ve still got appointments tomorrow, we could find something better.” He thinks that more reluctance shows through in his tone than he intended.

Shou doesn’t answer right away, instead falling backwards so that he’s half-lying on the bed, feet still grazing the floor. After a few more beats, he says, “Dibs on this bed.”

-

He asks as they’re going over a basic packet of paperwork, the first steps to putting in a security deposit and getting their names down on the lease.

“Mr. Nishigori? Shou and I, we’re…” Hm, how to phrase it, and he decides last minute on a half-truth, “...We’re about to be out of a place to live, honestly. Of course,” and at this he rubs his hand at the back of his neck, reluctant, sheepish, “I know it’s unconventional to let your tenants start living in the apartment before they’ve even signed the lease, but…” Nishigori blinks at him, surprised, and then smiles. “Nonsense! You’re certainly moving in, yes? Might as well make the transition easier and start now.” He claps Ritsu softly on the shoulder, and he has the distant, tired thought of, he’s going to be a good dad.

“If nothing else,” their new landlord jokes, “it’ll make it easier for me to track you down and get you to sign all this damn paperwork.”

-

Ritsu dozes off on top of the blankets of the blue-grey bed at almost one in the morning, pressed thigh to shoulder with Shou, propped up against the pillow monster they’ve made of the headboard. Ritsu’s laptop is balanced somewhat precariously between them, tinnily blaring some shitty B-movie that Shou had drug out of the dredges of his old hard drive for them to laugh at.

He’s not paid much attention, a little too tired to follow the plot, a little too giddy, occasionally just repeating Apartment 401, 37 Amaranth Street, Grain City to himself in his head.

Ritsu dozes off on his first night in his new apartment with his best friend, and the laptop on his leg is too warm but his feet are too cold, and the gelled spikes of Shou’s hair are vaguely tickling his face, and he’s going to have to do everything tomorrow, but beyond the easy, drowsy happiness of we actually fucking did it, he can’t really bring himself to care.

[livinginlavender]

My Disney Ride-or-Die Rides

I love Disney. Have I mentioned that I love Disney? Because I absolutely love Disney with all of my heart and soul and body.

Part of that love is based on the movies. I grew up watching them and I still watch them more often than I’d care to admit. But a bigger part of my love for Disney is a tradition my family has held since I was 9 months old: visiting either Disneyland or Walt Disney World once every year.

I would like to clarify that Disney didn’t used to be as expensive as it is now, and that as we’ve gotten older my siblings as I have begun chipping in (if not entirely paying for ourselves) when it comes to our yearly family trips. But as the price to visit goes up, my family continues to be savvy with our spending and trying to get the most bang for our buck.

Part of that “bang-for-your-buck”-ness involves getting the most out of our time in the parks. That brings me to today’s blog post.

Not 20 minutes ago, my dad was sitting on Connor’s bed in his room calling out items from a list he found on the internet. Basically, someone decided what the 10 least-worth-it rides were at Walt Disney World, and at least half of them are near and dear to my heart.

After cursing the person who wrote the original list under my breath, I snagged my laptop and decided to come up with my own lists of 5 rides at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World that are overhyped, and 5 rides each that aren’t hyped up enough.

WDW Overhyped:

1.     Tomorrowland Speedway

Maybe I’ve just had too many bad experiences on this ride. There have been too many times where the car just…stopped on the track for no apparent reason. Or the steering was broken and sent me (and Connor) klunking back and forth against the track’s metal guide, unable to control where we were going until we finally reached the queasy, miserable end of the “ride.” But waiting an hour or more to be sorely disappointed every time? Not worth it.

2.     The Magic Carpets of Aladdin/Dumbo the Flying Elephant/Astro Orbiter

Look, I get it. It’s fun for little kids. Heck, when I was a youngin’ I loved the Dumbo ride in particular. But I’ve seen adults with no kids wait in line for way longer than is worth it, only to sit there unamused for a minute and a half before the hydraulics bring them gently back to the ground. Just…don’t do it. Please.

3.     Toy Story Midway Mania!

Alright. I know there are a lot of people (even within my own family) who disagree with me on this one. This ride is extremely whippy and makes me nauseous, which isn’t an easy feat. Maybe it’s just my competitive side, but I always end up with a sore wrist and fingers from tugging the dang string so quickly and vigorously. If you want a better ride like this, the Buzz Lightyear ride at Magic Kingdom is a better way to go, and the line is always shorter. Please, save your neck the agony.

4.     Soarin’

I’ll admit, this is a ride worth riding once, maybe twice if you’re really into it. I happily rode it again after they redid the video for it, and it was pretty damn cool if I say so myself. But I won’t ride it again for another couple of years probably unless I’m forced into it. It’s like going to watch an Omnimax movie over and over again; it’s a lot shorter, true, but it’s just as nauseating. On the plus side, it smells amazing!

5.     Peter Pan’s Flight

I feel bad for putting this down. This ride is a family tradition dating back to my Grandpa White, who my siblings and I never got to meet; it was his favorite ride, and his love for it is somewhat ingrained in everyone in my family. But… The shortest the line usually is? Approximately 45 minutes to an hour. Most of the time it’s 90 minutes or more. While it’s a very unique ride that’s certainly a staple at the park, it’s best to just wait for a firework show to start before going.

WDW Under-appreciated:

1.     Journey Into Imagination With Figment

This was on the person’s original list of “rides that aren’t worth the wait,” and I exclaimed, “No!” when I heard it. This has been one of my favorite rides since I was a child, and to me it embodies everything that the front half of Epcot is about. Science and creativity, balancing curiosity with logic, and allowing your imagination to flow and carry you towards new discovery! Plus, the music is catchy and the line is never too long. What’s not to love?

2.     Dinosaur

I don’t care if Disney gets rid of the rest of the Dino-Land park in Animal Kingdom. But so help me GOD, if they get rid of the Dinosaur ride, I will RIOT! In the perfect balance of science, adventure, and amazing air conditioning, this ride is always my go-to ride at Animal Kingdom. Oh, did I mention that Bill Nye the Science Guy narrates the theory of evolution when you’re in line? Even middle school-Kylie geeked out about that!

3.     The Carousel of Progress

I will never understand how people don’t flock to this ride. It’s heavily air-conditioned. You get to sit and relax your feet. You’re learning technological advancements over the last 100 years in smaller decade-based increments based on the lives of an adorable family. And again, Disney’s coming in clutch with another catchy song! “There’s a great big beautiful tomorrow, just a dream away…”

4.     The People Mover

A mixture between air-conditioned and just cool, windy, and shady, the People Mover has a relatively short line and moves forward very consistently. It’s perfect when you just need a break from the pandemonium that is Magic Kingdom, or when your little ones need to rest, or even if you just want to take a peek at some of your favorite rides (i.e. Space Mountain) from an outside perspective.

5.     Living With the Land

This is…not exactly a ride most people flock to. They’d rather ride the Frozen ride, or Test Track, or something a little more exciting and “razzle-y dazzle-y.” But let me tell you, Living With the Land is freaking cool. When’s the last time you saw a pumpkin in the plastic mold growing into the shape of a Mickey head?

DL Overhyped:

1.     Matterhorn Bobsleds

Aside from the fact that I once almost dropped (and lost) my phone on this ride, it’s just very jerky. If someone hasn’t thrown out their back on this ride yet, I’d be surprised. A tip from a professional, though: the left side is smoother and faster!

2.     Dumbo the Flying Elephant (and the like)

3.     Toy Story Midway Mania!

4.     Autopia

Pretty much the same as the Tomorrowland Speedway above, but…even older. Imagine that.

5.     Peter Pan’s Flight

DL Under-appreciated:

1.     Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride

Is this ride still around? I feel like I remember someone saying it closed. Regardless, this has always been one of my favorites at Disneyland. Pop your kiddo behind the wheel of the car and let ‘em spin it away! Just…maybe cover their eyes at the end when it’s insinuated that Mr. Toad died and went to hell. It can be…traumatic.

2.     Alice in Wonderland

This ride is just…so old-school Disney and awesome. It’s got some of the best aspects of the original Disney rides, like the more traditional-style animatronics and the pull-down lapbars in a peculiar-looking vehicle. You traverse upwards through Wonderland before the doors open up to some higher-up leaves that your caterpillar-mobile traverses before bringing you back to the start of the ride. It’s short, sweet, and perfect if you can catch the line at the right time!

3.     Snow White’s Scary Adventure

This is another one that may not be there anymore? I can never remember! But after they took the Snow White ride out at Walt Disney World (later adding the Seven Dwarves’ Mine Train ride to somewhat replace it), this was the only ride dedicated to Snow White left. It’s cute, well-done, and a little spooky in just the right places. But everything ends with sunshine and rainbows as the ride dumps you back into the heat from its air-conditioned bowels.

4.     Monster’s Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue!

While WDW has the Laugh Floor, nothing quite compares to an actual ride tailored to one of the best classic Pixar movies. Honestly, it’s just like watching the film being fast-forwarded through the less-plot-heavy parts. It’s just…adorable. And worth so, so worth it. Especially for Roz’s comments at the end!

5.     Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin

While it’s nice to have the context of the backstory, it’s not necessary to have seen, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” to love and appreciate this ride. Balanced between goofy and a little spooky, even the line as you wait to ride is extremely well done!

Any Disney park is an interesting balance of entertainment, education, magic, and more. It’s important, I think, to work on finding that balance in order to make the most of your trip. If you push too hard, you’ll burn out. If you don’t push hard enough, you’ll miss out. If you follow my advice, you’ll find out that maybe there’s more to visiting Disney than spending an inordinate amount of time standing around and waiting for a ride that may not be worth it.

If you’re interested in hearing more tips and trick for your travels to Disney, you can watch my video about it here!