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EVERYBODY HAS THOSE THOUGHTS
SO IT DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE GAY
by
Cristian YoungMiller
RateABull
Books
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Published By:
RateABull Publishing
Copyright © 2010 by Cristian YoungMiller
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2010 by Cristian YoungMiller
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. For information contact Cristian YoungMiller at RateABull@gmail.com.
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Dedication:
To everyone who is having a hard time figuring out where they fit in.
*****
1
Jack was very sad. He was so sad that he didn’t even realize he was crying.
Jack rocked himself back and forth on the swing in his backyard. It was the swing that he and his friends hadn’t used since they were 12. The only reason why Jack, now 14 years old, had returned was because it helped to lessen his sadness.
Jack’s dad, dressed like how a doctor dressed when they came home from work, entered the backyard. Jack’s dad slowly walked over to the swing set and sat on the swing next to Jack.
“Bad day, kiddo?” Jack’s dad asked.
Jack didn’t want to talk so he just nodded his head yes.
“You know, when I have a bad day, I always talk to your mom about it. And when your mom has a bad day, she always talks to me about it. We always feel better once we do. Do you want to talk to me about your day? I promise you’ll feel better afterwards.”
“Billy and Sandy called me gay,” Jack said, very upset.
“Well that wasn’t very nice of your friends. But you know, it isn’t a bad thing to be gay.”
“But I’m not gay,” Jack said loudly.
“Ok.” Jack’s father looked back at the house. “When I was a kid, the kids in my school used to call me soft. Even back then I knew that there was nothing wrong with being soft. A lot of people prefer to be soft. In fact, now I actually prefer to work with people who are soft.”
“Is it because you are soft, dad?”
“Ummm, maybe.” Jack’s father said, looking over at his son, a bit surprised. “My point is, what’s so great about being hard? Nothing. And what’s so bad about being soft? Nothing.
But the thing wasn’t so much about the words that they used, as much as it was about how they said it. When they called me soft, I knew that they said it to try and hurt me. And because I knew that they were trying to hurt me, it did hurt me. So for your friends to call you gay for no reason, even if there’s nothing wrong with being gay, must make you feel bad.”
“Yeah,” Jack said, not feeling any better.
Jack and his father were quiet for a while as they both rocked themselves back and forth on the swing.
“But what if they weren’t saying it in a mean way?” Jack asked his dad.
“What, do you mean they weren’t yelling when they said it?”
“Yeah,” Jack quietly said back.
“Just because someone doesn’t yell something, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t meant to hurt you. And you can always tell if someone is saying something to hurt you, no matter how nicely they seem to say it.”
“Yeah, but what if they had a reason to say it?” Jack asked, looking at the ground in front of him.
“What reason could they possibly have for calling you gay?” Jack’s dad asked, confused.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with being gay. But if someone is saying something about you that isn’t true, it’s not right, no matter what it is.”
“Yeah,” Jack said, with less energy than usual. “But, what if they had a reason to call me that?”
“Why, did something happen?” Jack’s dad asked again.
“No,” Jack said before looking away.
Both sat on the swing quietly for another second.
“Have you ever heard of the game, Truth or Dare?” Jack asked, breaking the silence.
“Sure, why? What happened?”
“Umm,” Jack looked at his dad, trying to find the courage. “Can we go somewhere else to talk about this?”
“Why don’t we head inside?” Jack’s dad suggested.
“No.”
“Ok, then how about we take a trip to the mini-golf course and you can try and beat me at a round of mini-golf?”
Jack’s eyes lit up. He liked miniature golf. It was something that he considered himself to be very good at. He had always been able to beat Billy and Sandy at it. The only person that he hadn’t yet beaten was his dad. But even though the results were always the same when playing his dad, he still loved the challenge.
“Yeah, let’s do it.”
*****
2
Jack entered his bedroom, excitedly looking for his lucky mini-golf outfit. Just after he found it and was about to put it on, his bedroom door swung open.
“Mom, Cindy came into my room without knocking again!” Jack yelled past Cindy.
“Cindy, please knock before going into your brother’s room. And Jack, please lock the door if you’re changing. We put a lock on the door for a reason,” Jack’s mom yelled back.
“Are you going somewhere?” Jack’s little sister asked him.
“I’m gonna play mini-golf with dad, not that it’s any of your business.”
“I want to go,” Cindy said in a high pitched whine.
“You can’t come,” Jack replied sharply. “Now get out.”
“It’s not up to you anyway.” Cindy walked out of the room and yelled to their dad. “Daddy, can I come to play mini-golf?”
Jack closed the door behind Cindy and locked it.
“Please, can I come?” Cindy said in a very loud voice.
Jack changed into his lucky mini-golf outfit and went looking for his putter. As he did he heard a quick jiggle of the door knob, followed by a bang. Those would be the exact sounds of a little sister walking into a locked bedroom door and then falling to the ground.
“Mom, Jack locked his bedroom door and I can’t get in,” Jack heard his little sister yell.
As Jack looked through his closet he could hear his little sister knocking on the door.
“Jack, can I please come with you?”
“No,” Jack replied back without stopping his search.
“Pleeeease.”
“No, now go away,” Jack said without looking back.
After finding the putter Jack unlocked his door to find that Cindy was gone. He then went into the living room and waited for his dad.
“Ok, ready?” Jack’s dad asked as he entered the living room.
“Yep.”
They both walked out to the car and got in. Jack’s dad reversed out of the driveway and shifted the car into drive. Just as he did Cindy came running out of the house in her mini-golf outfit. She wore a lime green checkered skirt, white top, and a Scottish tam with a fuzzy ball on top.
“Wait for me,” she yelled as she adjusted her mini-golf club bag on her shoulders.
Pretending not to hear her, Jack’s dad drove off. Cindy, with the commitment of a boxer hound, ran down the sidewalk after the car.
The weight of her golf bag made her rock back and forth like a boxer hound wearing a Scottish tam with a fuzzy ball on top. And to add to her commitment, the look on her face said one thing, ‘I will play some mini-golf. Oh yes, I will.’
“I think Cindy’s chasing the car,” Jack said, looking into the rearview mirror.
“Yes she is, but she’ll give up.”
And after a while, one that included them circling the block once, she did give up.
“Yep, she’s got your mother’s little legs so I knew she’d tire. She put up a good fight though,” Jack’s dad said. “Now it’s on to mini-golf.”
Jack smiled.
*****
3
The mini-golf course where Jack and his father played was old. That meant that there was an unusual amount of sand on the parking lot, the giant clown head on the 7th hole no longer made that creepy laughing noise, and if you placed your ball in the right place, you could putt your ball along a groove in the artificial turf.
Jack’s friends hadn’t discovered the grooves. That was the secret to all of Jack’s victories. He wasn’t sure if his father had, and when Jack asked his father why it was that he kept winning, his father replied “I’m a doctor, and my specialty is in kick-buttockaphy”. But that wasn’t one of the types of doctors that Jack had learned about in school so Jack didn’t know what that meant.
“I think I’m going to beat you this time, dad,” Jack said, feeling his confidence come back to him.
“Well it’s important that you believe that son,” Jack’s father replied with a smile.
Jack’s first putt was exactly where he wanted it to go. Jack had placed his ball on the very edge of the groove in the artificial grass, and like a marble it rolled around the course and into the cup. It was a hole in one.
“Beat that,” Jack proclaimed while holding his putter over his head in victory.
“I don’t know if I can. That’s a good shot.”
But exactly on cue, Jack’s father lined up the shot and rolled it in too. It was another hole in one.
“How’d you do that?” Jack asked.
Jack’s dad smiled back. “I’m just that good,” he replied.
The two walked over to the next hole.
“So now I have a question for you,” Jack’s dad said to Jack who was lining up his next putt. “What happened during your game of Truth or Dare?”
Jack stepped out of his shot for a second. But after a breath, he stepped back in, missed the groove and knew he would need three putts to finish the hole.
A little peeved by his dad’s timing, Jack waited for the moment that his father was about to putt before he spoke.
“I guess we were playing Truth or Dare and Billy asked me what my strangest dream was,” Jack said, interrupting his dad’s stroke.
Jack’s dad stood without putting. “What did you say?”
“Well, I had this really strange dream once where Billy and I were walking along this really narrow mountain path. And as we were walking Billy slipped and I grabbed him. He reached up and grabbed my shirt and it ripped. I then went to get a better grip, but he slipped out of my hand and fell.
I didn’t know what to do so I got on my knees and looked over the cliff. And when I looked over he hadn’t actually fallen. He was holding onto the ledge.
So I reached down, grabbed his arm and pulled him up. And when I pulled him onto the ledge, because it was so narrow, he rolled onto me.
And we were both completely out of breath so neither of us could move. But at the same time we were both really relieved that he hadn’t fallen. And then after a second…” Jack stopped talking and looked up at his dad. “We… kissed.”
Jack’s dad paused for a moment with almost no reaction on his face. Then after a few seconds, his dad broke the silence. “And this is why your friends said that you were gay?”
Jack, with a guilty look on his face, nodded his head yes.
Jack’s dad refocused himself, leaned over his putt and sent the ball past the windmill blades and onto the backside of the hole. This was certainly going to be a two putt for him.
“Jack, dreams are funny things. Our brain is like a computer in a way. Just like a computer we have our short term memory; in computers it’s called ram. And we have our long term memory; in a computer that would be the hard drive. And do you know how when you shut down a program or turn off a computer it doesn’t always turn off as soon as you press the button?”
“Yeah,” Jack said as he continued putting.
“Well, that delay happens because the computer is moving all of the information from its short term memory to its long term memory. It is the same thing with your brain.
All through the day your brain takes in more information than any computer could ever dream about. And while we sleep, our brain is moving all of our day’s memories into long term memory.”
Jack’s dad quieted down for a second while he made his second putt. Jack then putted after him and made the hole in three putts like he thought he would.
“The brain, however, has a super efficient way of storing memory.”
“What does efficient mean?” Jack asked, as his father was about to putt on the next hole.
“When something is efficient it is done very quickly and with the least amount of energy possible. Got it?” Jack’s dad asked, looking back at Jack.
“Yep.”
“So the brain stores the information in a way that allows it to be accessed very quickly whenever you need it. And the way it does that is by putting your daily memories into categories. A memory might be stored under the adventure category. And another memory might be stored under the good-times category.
But then what the brain does is scan the memories for similarities to other memories. So let’s say that you were wearing your blue jacket in your memories today and you were wearing the same blue jacket in a memory that you had two months ago. Well, what your brain does is create a connection between the two memories by growing a neuron. A neuron is kind of like an extension cord between memories. This is done so that if you ever want to remember when else you wore that blue jacket, you can.”
“Wow,” Jack replied while staring at his father.
“Cool, right?” Jack’s dad said with a smile. “Now the problem is that when your brain is processing all of those memories, your mind has to be on. It is like the way that your computer has to be on. And the result is that we dream.
I don’t think that you have actually walked along a narrow mountain path, have you?” Jack’s dad asked.
“No,” Jack replied.
“But you probably saw it in lots of movies, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, one of those movies probably had something in common with an experience that you had during the day that you had the dream. So what happened was, first your brain scanned all of its memories for anything that may have been similar to your experiences from that day. And once it found the similarity, the connection was made.
When you had that dream, what your brain was doing was mixing and matching images from different parts of each memory to figure out what else fit. That mixing and matching created a dream about something that you have never done and may not have ever considered.
Dreams aren’t there to tell you what you want or how you should act. They are what’s left over as your brain scans and stores all of your memories.”
“But why was I kissing Billy in the dream?” Jack asked a little sad.
“Because not only does your brain store the things that you see and touch, it also stores the emotions that you had during the day. And in one of the movies that you watched about someone falling off of the path, it probably involved a kiss. When you saw that, you probably felt like those two people had a close connection. So on the day that you had that dream, you probably experienced something that made you feel that you had a close connection with Billy.
Your brain then looked at both of those feelings, and decided that they were similar enough to each other to connect. But your brain, working as efficiently as possible, made the connection by creating a dream where you kissed Billy.
Your brain wasn’t trying to tell you that you wanted to kiss Billy. It was just doing what it does, and creating a connection between memories. Do you understand?”
Jack looked at his dad, amazed. “Yeah, I understand. I guess that makes sense.”
“And don’t worry, everybody has those dreams, so it doesn’t mean you’re gay,” Jack’s dad said with a smile.
Jack remained quiet for the next two holes. He wasn’t playing his best today. He was a little distracted by all of the things that his dad had said.
On the other hand, Jack’s dad was playing better than he ever had. Jack took a moment to try and figure out how his dad was doing it. But instead of asking his father, when Jack spoke, something else came out.
“What if that wasn’t the only thing that happened?” Jack asked while searching his father’s face for a reaction. “I don’t know if I can tell you this one.”
“Why not?” Jack’s dad asked instead of putting into the clown’s mouth.
“Because I don’t know what you’ll say.”
Jack’s dad looked back into his son’s eyes, and Jack slowly shifted his focus to his father’s feet. Jack’s dad thought for a second and then made his putt into the clown’s mouth. When he did the clown started to laugh a creepy fake laughter. Jack’s dad didn’t realize that they had recently fixed the clown. His dad felt bad about the laughter. It wasn’t great timing.
*****
4
Jack’s dad walked over to Jack, got onto his knees and put his hands on Jack’s shoulders.
“I want you to know that there is nothing that you could say, and nothing that you could do that would make me stop loving you. Nothing. Do you understand me?” Jack’s dad asked.
“Yeah,” Jack replied, still looking down.
Jack’s dad touched Jack’s face to bring Jack’s eyes up to his own.
“There is nothing,” Jack’s dad repeated. “So if there is anything that you ever want to talk to me about, I am here to listen.
Sometimes I will be able to offer you some information that will help you. And sometimes I won’t. But you will see that it always feels good when you can talk to someone about what’s on your mind. And I’m always here to listen. Got it?”
“Yeah, I got it,” Jack said with a smile.
“So tell me, what happened.”
“Well, Sandy asked Billy if he wanted a truth or a dare. Billy said dare, so Sandy dared Billy to kiss me. I guess it was because I had just told them about my dream.”
“That’s an unusual dare,” Jack’s dad said, with his thinking look on his face.
“That’s what I thought too. Billy tried to back out of it, but Sandy told him that he had to do it. So Billy asked me if it was alright with me and I said yeah because it was a part of the game. Then we both stood up, and when Billy leaned over…” Jack stopped talking as he gathered himself.
“That’s ok. Go on.”
“I didn’t realize it when I got up but… ummm,” Jack said, struggling to get it out.
“That’s ok, you can say it.”
“I had a boner,” Jack said, looking up into his dad’s eyes. “And Sandy saw it and told Billy. Then Sandy laughed and told me that I was gay.”
“What did Billy do?” Jack’s dad asked.
“First he just stared at me. He didn’t laugh or anything. But after Sandy said I was gay again, Billy looked at me and said ‘yeah dude, you’re gay’.”
“How did that make you feel?” Jack’s dad asked.
“I felt really bad.”
Jack’s dad again put his hand on his son’s shoulders.
“Jack, it’s ok if you’re gay. I would love you just as much no matter what you were.”
“But I’m not gay, dad.”
“Jack, it’s ok if you’re gay. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it.”
“But dad, I’m not gay. I like girls.”
“What do you mean you like girls?”
“I like girls,” Jack repeated.
“How do you like girls?”
“Like, I think about kissing them and stuff.”
Jack’s dad wasn’t sure what to say so instead of talking he found his ball and finished out the hole.
“Your putt,” Jack’s dad said, as if Jack hadn’t said anything at all.
Jack finished off the hole as well, but it took three more putts than he thought it should have.
The last hole was a long bumpy putt. You had to hit the ball really hard and let it bounce off the rubber wall and land near the hole. Still without a word, Jack’s dad dropped his ball onto the ground and lined up his putt with the grooves in the artificial grass. Staring at the ground, Jack’s dad was inspired to speak. He turned and looked at his son.
“How long have you been friends with Billy?”
“Ever since I was small,” Jack replied.
“Is he your best friend?” Jack’s dad asked.
“Yeah, he’s my best friend.”
“Have you ever hugged your best friend?” Jack’s dad asked.
“No!”
Jack’s dad was surprised by how quickly Jack answered. “Why not?”
“Because that’s gay!”
Jack’s dad looked a little disappointed at his son’s response. “Well, have you ever just sat with your arm around his shoulder?”
“No,” Jack again replied.
“Why not?”
“Because that’s a little gay too, dad.”
As Jack looked at his father’s face, he could see that his father had heard what he was expecting to hear.
Jack’s dad turned his attention back towards his golf ball. “Have you ever noticed that there are little grooves in the artificial grass?”
“Yeah,” Jack replied.
“Did you ever notice that if you line up your ball with those grooves and you hit the ball just right, the ball will go right into the hole?”
“Yeah, that’s how I always beat my friends,” Jack said with a smile.
“Our brains kind of work like that. If a baby were to look at a golf ball, it wouldn’t mean anything to the baby. That’s because it doesn’t have any memories or feelings connected with golf balls. But if we looked at a golf ball, we would have a whole lot of memories and feelings.
That is because our experiences have made a groove in our brain from our eyes to the memories and feelings that we have about golf balls. We have billions of grooves like this in our brain. Some of those grooves were created as we grew up. And others are grooves we were born with.
One of the grooves that we were born with is connected to being touched and hugged by people that we like. In fact, if babies aren’t touched, they will grow up with disabilities. Being touched is so important to us that our brain releases a chemical that makes us feel very good when we are touched by someone we like. Being touched and hugged by people we like is a groove that we can’t change.
But let’s say that you were to put your golf ball on the front of a groove in the grass. And let’s say that you putt it perfectly and your golf ball traveled right to the hole. But let’s also say that just before the ball fell into the hole, I put my foot on top of the hole. What would happen?”
“It would bounce off your foot,” Jack said, very interested in what his dad was telling him.
“Yes. It would bounce off and go in another direction. The same thing happens when you feel a connection to someone and then you prevent yourself from expressing it with a hug. If you were to put your foot over the hugging hole by saying that it was wrong to feel that, then those feelings are going to bounce off and go somewhere else.
What will happen then is that your brain will go around looking for what it thinks is the next best expression of that feeling. Many times hugging is put into the sexual activity category of our brains, so when your brain can’t attach those close connection feelings with hugging, it sometimes connects it to kissing.
This new connection means that whenever you feel close to someone, instead of wanting to hug them, you now think about kissing them. So if you suddenly feel close to your best friend, you might imagine kissing them.
But if you also try to block any thought you might have of kissing your best friend, your brain will then look for the next best connection. The next best connection could be getting an erection. And there is nothing that you can do to prevent an erection, so that is where it would stay.
All of this can happen simply because you won’t allow yourself to hug someone you feel connected with. And when this happens, you might still like girls just as much as the next guy. The only difference between you and the next guy would be that you also have a couple of unexpected reactions to guys you feel close to.”
“I think I understand what you’re saying. But, how is it that…” Jack couldn’t find the right words. “There are people who are gay, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then if this is how people have gay thoughts, and it doesn’t mean that they’re gay, how can you tell if you are gay?”
“What I described is how gay thoughts can sometimes happen in otherwise straight people. But some people are born with grooves that aren’t as easy to block or change. Sometimes when a boy looks at a boy, or a girl looks at a girl, their brains carry those messages down to a certain part of the brain that releases chemicals that make them feel really good. Those are the people that are born gay. Those boys and girls figure this out about themselves when they are pretty young.
But that is not how it works for the majority of people that have unexpected feelings toward the same sex. It is a little less black and white for the majority of people who have had feelings for a member of the same sex.”
“Are there a lot of people that have unexpected feelings for the same sex?” Jack asked, very interested in the answer.
“Almost half of everyone who has ever lived has had at least one unexpected feeling or thought for a person of the same sex. And the majority of them would also consider themselves to be completely straight.”
“So how do you know what you are?” Jack asked.
“Well, for those that don’t automatically know, it becomes a personal decision about who you want to be considering the feelings that they are having.
There was this guy years ago that studied this topic. His name was Dr. Kinsey and he created a way to help understand unexpected same sex feelings. What he did was he created a scale that you can compare yourself to.
On one side of the scale are people that have never had an unexpected same sex thought or feeling. On the other side of the scale were people that have never had a sexual feeling for people of the opposite sex.
He gave those who have never had an unexpected thought toward the same sex a score of zero, and those that have never had an opposite sex thought a six. Everyone else in the world got a one though five.
A one meant that you had an unexpected thought or feeling about the same sex, but you have never and will never act on it. A two meant that you had an unexpected thought or feeling and have acted on it, but you know that your feelings for the opposite sex are much stronger than your feelings for the same sex.
A three means that you have just as many feelings for the same sex as you do the opposite sex. A four means that you have had many thoughts and feelings for people of the opposite sex, but you have much stronger feelings for those of the same sex.
A five means that you have had unexpected thoughts and feelings about people of the opposite sex, but you would never act on them. And a six means that you have only had thoughts or feelings for people of the same sex.”
“Wow,” Jack said, amazed at what his father had said.
“People are all very different. And one thought or feeling a person has for their friend or a loved one doesn’t make a person gay or straight. In fact, what Dr. Kinsey also learned was that just because you have a score when you are young, doesn’t mean that you will have the same score later in life. He learned that sometimes your score will go up on the scale, and sometimes it will go down.
There is no right place to be on the scale. And anyone that tells you that one score is better than the other, is wrong. If we were all supposed to be the same, then we wouldn’t have all been made so differently. And the fact that we are all different means that our differences are important and good. Got it?”
“Yeah, I do,” Jack replied with a big smile.
“Good,” Jack’s dad said, returning his son’s smile.
*****
5
Jack’s dad returned his focus to his first putt on the final hole. But instead of putting he thought for a second. “Since I know that you were a little distracted before, how about I give you a chance to win it all.”
“Ok,” Jack said, excited to still be able to go home with a win.
“This last hole is winner take all. I’ll putt first. If I sink a hole in one then I am still the champ. If I don’t then you have the chance to win. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
Jack’s dad leaned over his golf ball gripping his club tightly. This last hole was a long one and a hole in one was nearly impossible. Even so, Jack’s dad gently lined up the putter and gave the ball a whack.
The ball let out a ‘ping’ as it left the club. It bounced off the rubber wall, circled the corner and headed straight for the hole.
Jack watched his possible win disappear before his eyes. As the ball got closer to the hole, Jack’s hopes got smaller. And finally when the ball rimmed around the top of the hole, Jack’s heart sunk.
But an amazing thing happened. The ball was traveling with so much speed that even though the ball circled the rim of the hole, it didn’t drop in. It dipped down into the edge of the hole, but kept on circling until the ball curled back over the rim and popped out.
It was a near perfect shot. Jack had never seen a hole in one on this last hole. This was the closest he’d seen.
Once the ball left the rim of the cup, it rolled less than a foot away. It would be an easy two putt for his dad. Jack, who had been excited when the ball rimmed out, felt his heart sink again.
“Did you see that putt,” Jack’s dad said excitedly. “There is only one type of putt that could beat that, and you know what type that is.”
“A hole in one,” Jack said sadly.
“That’s right, a hole in one. And I just want to add that there is no shame in coming in second. We had fun and that’s the most important part.”
“We could still tie,” Jack added, trying to feel better about his chances.
“Oh no. I said that I would give you a chance to win, not a chance to tie. If we tie, I win. And like I said, there is no shame in coming second, especially to a licensed kick-buttockogist like me. And don’t worry, there is always next time.”
Jack loved his dad a lot, but one thing that Jack knew about his dad was that he was a sore winner. He knew that his dad would talk about this great putt for the next week. Jack didn’t want that.
So Jack took a good look at all of the grooves in the grass. He lined his ball up to the main one just as his father had. With care he leaned himself over the ball and took a little breath.
With the club just right, he pulled his putter back and heard the ‘ping.’ The ball took the same path as his dad’s. It bounced off of the rubber wall and then curved around the corner. It didn’t have as much speed as his dad’s and the closer it got to the hole, the less likely it looked like it would make it.
Everything seemed to move in slow motion now. Jack watched as the ball eased its way up to the hole. There was definitely not enough speed. In fact, the ball rolled all the way up to the rim of the hole, the very edge of the hole, and then stopped. Jack’s heart dropped to the ground.
Jack felt the breath come out of him. He looked down at his feet and then up at his father, who had a huge grin on his face. The game was over… or so they both thought.
What they didn’t know was what was holding the ball back. If anyone had gotten up close to the ball, not just close, but really close, they would have seen that the only thing holding the ball back was a single blade of artificial grass.
That small fact wouldn’t have made any difference if the mini-golf course was newer, but it wasn’t. This was an old, worn out golf course, and the grass was just as worn.
On a newer course that artificial blade of grass would have held its ground. But on this worn course where the laughing clown often needed fixing and where there were grooves in the grass, the worn blade of grass could not.
After a second, or maybe it was two, that worn blade of grass let go and Jack’s ball, which he had struck just perfectly, fell in the cup. Jack was the new champion.
When Jack saw this, a huge smile crawled across his face. He hesitated for a moment before he looked up at his father because he knew that his dad would be devastated. But when he did look, that wasn’t what he found.
What Jack found was an even bigger smile on his father’s face. Jack didn’t think that his dad could smile any bigger than when he would take home the victory, but somehow his dad had found a way.
Still with his oversized smile, Jack’s dad dropped his putter and walked over to his son. In one move he threw his arms around his son and held him tighter than he had in years. Jack could do nothing but to stand there and hug him back.
As he stood there, what went though Jack’s mind was just how right his father was. It did feel good to get a hug from someone you liked. But standing there on the mini-golf course that day, Jack had learned more than that.
What Jack had learned was that no matter how good it felt to get a hug from someone you liked, it felt even better to get a hug from someone you loved. And from that day forward, with all of the surprising things that he would experience in his life, Jack would find nothing unexpected about that.
The End.
*****
Buy these books now from author Cristian YoungMiller
Everybody Masturbates
‘Everybody Masturbates’ is the perfect gift idea for anyone from ages 8 to 42 years old. In the style of the classic book ‘Everyone Poops,’ ‘Everybody Masturbates’ is designed to make boys and girls of all ages feel comfortable about masturbation.
(It also makes a great party gift for adults.)
Everybody Masturbates for Girls
‘Everybody Masturbates for Girls’ is the perfect gift idea for girls between the ages of 7 to 87 years old. Also, in the style of the classic book ‘Everyone Poops,’ ‘Everybody Masturbates for Girls’ addresses the specific issues that girls have accepting their emerging sexuality.
(It also makes a great party gift for adults.)