Christmas Challenges

Story by Akshay Irudayaraj

| AUTUMN 2019 ISSUE | FICTION

The main character of J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, writes with a cynical, captivating voice, which inspired Akshay to try and capture it.

Because you really want to know I’ll tell you about what I got for Christmas. I didn’t get any long water slides, life-like dinosaurs, or giant bouncy balls, but I did get some other pretty cool things, and I’ll do my best to make them sound exciting. So first up we have the… wait, actually, I’ll tell you the number of gifts first. There are one, two, three, four, five gifts. Five gifts in total. Not a lot, not a little; actually, it is a lot because of the quality of the gifts. I got three really great gifts and two really unfavorable “gifts.” I’ll explain it later. So the way my parents set it up was that I had two choices: go for “danger,” which means getting two good gifts if I pass a challenge they choose, but if I fail the challenge I have to do two chores or bad things (for me) they select; or the “safe” option, which means I get one good and no challenge. I went in thinking I was going to challenge all of them and win six good gifts. Unfortunately, I did not. The morning of Christmas was pretty exceptional. My mother and father served me breakfast-in-bed, which was chocolate-chip pancakes and bacon, my favorite. Then, after we had done our bathroom necessities, my younger brother, sister, I went downstairs to compete for gifts. Because both of my siblings are younger than me, they got to try their luck at the challenges first. For their age levels, the challenges were hard, but for me they were easy. However, I didn’t do them; they did. My younger brother, the youngest of us all, at the age of five, had his first three challenges. The first one he obviously picked danger, just to try it. I supported that, my brother was a bit of a daredevil. His challenge was to run a mile in eight minutes. It was hard for him because of his short legs, but I knew my brother could do it. He finished with a 7:49 mile time. Just TEN seconds away from losing! But my brother managed to do it, getting him two prizes. In the next two challenges, he picked the safe option. He figured one win was enough, plus he REALLY didn’t want chores. His final score was four good and no bad. After him, my six-and-a-half year old (she made it very clear) sister tested her skills. She went for a challenge first. It was to fill out the multiplication table in under six minutes. Keep in mind she is seven. For me that’s easy, but for her, because she hasn’t mastered it yet, it is very hard. Sadly, she did not get it in time but instead finished the table with a time of 6:14. She was close but not close enough. She decided to go with safe options for the rest of her selections. Her final record was two good and two bad. Last but not least was me. I wanted to be more of a daredevil than my brother, so I decided to do two challenges and one safe, no matter the outcome of the first. Because my parents know I liked playing basketball, they challenged me to make one three-pointer in under 15 seconds. This was tough, but I knew I could do it. I missed the first shot, making me kind of nervous, but nailed the second one. I finished with nine seconds left on the clock. It was a piece of cake. The second challenge my parents gave me was to freestyle five bars of rap. Seems easy but all of the lines had to rhyme. I was unsure of whether or not I could do it, but I tried my best. I got three lines in, but for the fourth line, I couldn’t think of a word in time. Unfortunately, that meant two chores. Nooooo! I was happy to play a safe next round and get a secured gift. My final score was three good, two bad. Surprisingly, my brother got the best score out of all of us, as he is the youngest. Anyway, that was my story about Christmas. Peace out!