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Just A Game-Personal Narrative

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Just a Game
It was just a game. I didn’t know it was as bad as it was until about a year ago when I was crying alone in my room for days.
I was young and I spent my most vulnerable years in one of the poorest counties in the nation. The one stop light town I lived in was Maxton, North Carolina. The houses were mostly trailers separated by fields and trees. The town was completely isolated in so many ways. It made Maxton the perfect camouflage for drug houses and kept the scrutiny of the police down to a bare minimum. That being said, there wasn’t much of a police force in Maxton either way. The three gas stations available were robbed twice weekly. The only trademark around was a Campbell's Soup factory and prostitutes filled the store across …show more content…

They addressed my grandparents as their own and it was a special place. That single-wide, faded green mobile home was important to everyone around. My Papa had built a porch out front and painted it white. There were flowers hanging from the top of the roof and fly traps around the storm door. My Mema would feed all the kids with parents who were too strung out to know their kids were starving. Truly, my family was a blessing to that God forsaken place.
One of the older kids I spent a lot of time with was about 5 to 6 years older than me. He was about 11 at the time of this story. He was taller than me by more than a couple feet, with shaved dark brown hair and light skin. We will call him Tony for the sake of privacy. Tony seemed normal, but we all knew he had problems. His mom smoked crack-cocaine while she was pregnant with him and his little brother. Tony’s little brother’s name was JJ and he was the same age as I. JJ and I got along well and when Tony would get angry and hit him, I’d always take JJ’s side.
I spent a lot of time alone with Tony and his little brother. We would run down every dirt road in Maxton. In our minds, we were invincible. Jumping recklessly on trampolines and chasing small rodents indiscriminately. Nothing will ever quite live up to the miles we rode on ATV’s or the pools we risked trespassing to swim …show more content…

He made JJ and I play too. Tony wanted JJ to become a man, and that's how you learned. You're only a man when you can take a woman like this. You played the game and the more we acted like the adults, the quicker we became them.
I remember the feeling of dread every weekend I spent with them. The fear of being pressed down upon and suffocated by the weight of someone twice my size was in all of my thoughts. The idea of being cramped into a tiny space with the air being completely taken away as Tony and JJ would huff it away, leaving me breathless and wanting to just stop.
I knew the game wasn't fun, it felt wrong, but week after week I played. Eventually, Tony couldn't wait. We didn't take many more safety precautions. We would play outside the pump house or in his room. That's how he ultimately got caught. Outside the pump house, we were assuming our roles. One of my older cousins went to the backyard and saw us. Soon after telling my Papa, he showed up and dragged Tony into the house. Soon after my Mema brought me as

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