Despite what I said above (which I generally still stand by), and at least partially buoyed by Cassandra's very nice comments on past scribbles, I decided I couldn't leave this one alone after all. It wasn't the story I had in mind when I first declined, but like all things you shouldn't pick at, I couldn't help it. So, here's something. Its 2439 words have arrived purely from brain to page to here. If it floats your boat, change it in your mind from soon-to-be high school graduates on their way to college to soon-to-be college graduates on their way to the working world. It has not been proofread or run through any overhyped program to give me ideas for improvement. It may NOT be posted to the Archive. But here it is.
Snakes and Ladders Meets Truth or Dare
“Snakes and Ladders? What is this?”
Graduation was but a week away, and I couldn’t think of anyone of our age who played, what was in essence, a kids’ game. Even more correct than that, it was my kids’ game: it had been dumped in the corner of the basement room that served as the storage room/my teenage hangout about 7 or 8 years ago when I last played it and had been left decaying in the sun ever since. One of the more ‘worldly’ of our group of soon-to-be graduates corrected me of that notion by smiling like Batman’s Joker and asked if I’d ever played it according to the rules of truth or dare. I looked around at a sea of equally blank faces, and nobody had the first clue what he was on about.
The rules, he explained, were simple. It was a very normal game of Snakes and Ladders, but with a twist. You could only take a ladder, or avoid falling victim to a snake, if you accepted a truth or dare question. If you failed to answer, then you couldn’t, or were obliged to take it just as if you’d declined. Therefore, someone who was very open to doing anything could take maximum advantage, whilst someone who was coy and shy would probably still be fighting their way out of the twenties whilst the rest of us were towards the top.
“Well, go on then,” I said, bravado getting the better of me.
“Sure.”
“Yeah!”
It took seconds for us all to agree. It may have been ‘childish’, and borderline offensive to our Senior egos, but it had the advantage it was something we could all do at once. Games consoles were a fine thing, but there were only so many controllers and a lot of boredom whilst you waited for it to be your turn. There were seven of us but only six counters, so someone raided the Monopoly box for an extra counter, and the first dice rolled. My game, me first, apparently.
Picture the scene. Seven teenage boys, ready for the wide world of college or employment, sitting there with our drinks and snacks playing snakes and ladders. It was almost the story of an idyllic harking back to the past… were it not for the fact my parents had supplied us with a beer each (with parental permission, of course), because at least whilst we were drinking it in the basement we weren’t hanging around outside buying the self-same beer with the fake IDs that at least some of us had, but our parents pretended they didn’t know about and we lied about having. It was only a single beer, so probably less than we’d drink otherwise, but it was still “better” – and in a way, we couldn’t really argue with their thought process.
The game started well. Having decided to play according to these newly-discovered Truth or Dare rules we were a little… timid… in our first questions. All the usual stuff that you could imagine: first kiss, teacher you had a crush on, first wet dream… at any other time we’d be embarrassed to even think that’s what we wanted to know about, but it just fitted the moment. The dares weren’t too terrible either, and equally fitted our age: doing a silly dance and (maybe) posting it on our social media platform of choice, eating crackers with no water, taking chilli sauce on the lips without licking it off… you know the drill.
Luck must have been on my side, because I was actually doing rather well. I’d progressed solidly through some lucky dice rolls, somehow avoiding the worst of the snakes and being prepared to take a risk for the ladders. My truths and dares hadn’t been too bad, although I did blush the colour of a tomato when asked to reveal who I had a crush on, especially considering it was one of the technicians at my orthodontist. By the time I’d finished being able to cook an egg on my cheeks, the other couple of guys with braces in the room could see my point of view. I determined to go nicely on them if I got to choose their dare after they said that.
Hang on a moment, I hear you ask. At least three guys, of a bunch of seven high school seniors about to graduate, with braces? Uh huh, you heard me correctly. It’s a long and complicated story, but basically, one of two orthodontists previously in town had to retire early for medical reasons, and the other was not particularly well-liked. He seemed to be a bit of a cosmetician, so he was fine if you wanted a quick fix, or were a girl, but he didn’t seem to get that boys… men, as we were about to become, of our age, would rather have something that would allow us to eat different things and stand up to the rigours of sport. After a year or so, I forget how long, this new guy came along from a nearby town and set up shop, so quite a few people have started later than they usually would have done. In my case, I had braces back when I was at the wrong end of junior high, like we used to, but my lower jaw grew more than expected, so I have a bit of an underbite. I was meant to go back just before the medical problems, so here I am, aged 18 and wearing not only braces, but I have a dirty little secret to go with it. Headgear.
Not just any normal headgear either. Not like the headgear that Marcus is literally wearing across the room from me now, because this new orthodontist is a bit bonkers, in his own way, and has encouraged some of us that the best way to ensure compliance is to have the headgear wired to your braces so you can’t take it off. At least that just looks like a horse bridle, and there are a few of those around. No, mine is this chunky bar that sits down the middle of my face, with a great plastic block on my forehead and around my chin, and which I have to hold on with elastics. That can’t be wired on, thankfully (or at least he says not), but I don’t see nearly as many of those, and I’m a bit embarrassed. Very embarrassed, in fact. I’ve been pretty good about wearing it at night, when I should, but there’s no doubting I’m not really making the wear time regularly, and I don’t wear it as much as I should earlier in the evening. Stupid really, given I have an ortho check-up next week and there is literally a guy with his headgear wired to his face sitting opposite me, but I just can’t. I’m hoping mom doesn’t come in and ‘remind me’ in front of my friends… I’d be mortified.
Anyway, the game. I’m doing well, and if my luck continues to be in, there’s a chance I might win in the next couple of goes, provided I don’t land on the snake, or get an awkward dare if I do. Damn. I land on it.
“OK, who’s turn to set the dare… Charlie?”
Charlie looks at me, and smiles. He’s had braces, and frankly needs them again, the way his teeth bend inwards at the bottom to avoid something like… headgear.
“Wear your headgear to graduation.”
The room goes silent. Everybody looks at me, and once again I go the colour of a tomato.
“How do you…?”
“Dude, you’ve been seen. Taking the garbage out a few nights ago.”
“Fu….”
I stop myself, because I hear my mom walk down the corridor outside, and she hates swearing. But the noise from the rest of the room encourages her anyway. Almost everyone bar Charlie thinks that’s a pretty massive increase in the dare stakes compared to what we’ve done so far. OK, he might not like me that much (enough to come to my house and eat my food, but we’re not best buddies or anything), so there’s a fair bit of talking.
“Everything OK in here boys? Need those bowls or glasses refilled?”
In fairness, she wasn’t the sort to hang around. We’d been down here for more than an hour before she popped by, and it was easier on her than for us to keep tramping up and down.
She asked what the deal was, and she got the brief explanation. To my surprise, she thought it sounded like a good idea, and maybe she should play it with her friends sometime, get them to reveal some things! I hoped that would be it, but no, someone had to say something.
“Hey, Mrs Langley. As Eli is your son, perhaps you can help. Charlie has just dared him to wear his headgear to graduation... but that sounds like a pretty big ask, for something he’ll only do once. What do you think, as his mom and all?”
My mother took a sharp breath in.
“Well, if so far you’ve been asking about first dates, and I haven’t exactly heard any of you singing embarrassing songs in the corridor, that does sound like a bit of a push… but Eli, you know you have been slacking a bit recently. Why don’t you put it on now?”
“Mom!!”
My embarrassment showed itself again.
“I… hang on… in front of…”
She only had to look at Marcus and I knew I was cornered. She promised to make sure nobody cheated whilst I went and got it from upstairs.
I returned a few minutes later with the navy-blue contraption clamped to my face. Four elastics, “two straight, two crossover” held it into my mouth, with the lower part cupping my cheek and the upper part resting smack on the middle of my rather large forehead (high hairline, not receding, I keep telling myself). I smiled weakly, and although a couple of the guys were surprised, nobody really seemed to laugh, or make fun of me.
“Perhaps that could be his dare? Wearing it in front of you for the rest of the evening?”
“Wait… I know…”
I groaned. It wasn’t Charlie, thankfully, or Marcus, but the other guy with braces.
“You know Dr Ben has that wall in his office of people wearing their braces doing normal things… looks like he also does it on his socials. What if we got Eli, and Marcus, to post a picture wearing their headgears?”
Marcus objected to that immediately, but softened when he was given a free pass on his next snake or ladder if he did so. He just shrugged. He’d been wearing it for a few months, almost everyone had seen it, it was old news now. I was going to take it, but then Charlie suggested to make it a proper dare, Marcus or someone else should take it, so that I couldn’t delete it. My mom, who thought this was hilarious and ever keener to play it with her friends (I was going to have to stop her on that, or at least make sure I was out… I didn’t want to overhear anything embarrassing) offered to take the picture. In less than a minute, Marcus had the picture uploaded to Dr Ben’s pages – the cheeky git put it on more than one site – and had us both tagged. Now the whole town, and a couple of other towns where he had offices, would know about my facemask.
I spent most of the rest of the evening feeling my cheeks glowing with embarrassment. Firstly because of the facemask, headgear, whatever it was called, and then secondly about how ridiculous I was being about it. There was literally another headgear in the room that couldn’t be removed. At least I could take mine off!
Going to bed that night, I couldn’t help but look at the comments. There were a few laughter emojis, but mostly the comments were pretty decent. For all his faults, Dr Ben was actually pretty nice. He’d even commented himself, saying he wasn’t aware I was entering the competition. I had no idea what he was on about, but I knew I’d find out.
Turns out it was to my advantage. He’d bulk bought tickets to the local water park, some free, some 25% discounts, and was giving them out to people who posted their “summer socials” in headgears, or other appliances. If you lucked out and just had basic braces, you had to find a way of making them visible. I soon found out why Charlie had said graduation as his opener. If you wore your headgear in a group picture at graduation, you all got a free ticket to the waterpark. There were then 25% off discounts for an individual picture at graduation, one for any picture at the after party, and up to two other summer activities. If you completed a set of four, there was another freebie. Basically, for five embarrassing moments, I could get myself two free trips to the waterpark and four discounted entries, and I’ll be honest… a week without a trip to the waterpark in high summer would be like Thanksgiving without a Turkey. Dr Ben knew exactly where to get us on the bribery stakes.
I couldn’t quite bring myself to put it on for the run through of the big day, but as we lined up in the sports centre for our big walk down the aisle, I pulled the facemask out of my bag, followed by the little bag of elastics. I handed the facemask to an astonished Marcus whilst I put the elastics onto the hooks in my mouth. Just like Marcus’ headgear straps, the plastic bits of my facemask had been changed from their navy-blue colour to perfectly match the school’s shade of green. Goodness knows where he got them from, and I don’t want to know. It was just my luck that the part of the cap that held onto my head ended just above the facemask, almost seamlessly moulding into one. At least it was a shade of dark green, and unlike the normal mid-blue, Marcus’ straps nearly blended in with his dark hair. It seemed like half the school had swapped strap colours. How very Dr Ben.
Let’s just say, I don’t think I paid full price entry for any of my trips to the water park that summer. It wasn’t the last time we played Snakes and Ladders meets Truth or Dare either.
