Longshot by Lance Allred Page B

steer my tongue. Absolutely humiliating. Here I am with this beautiful woman, and she’s completely emasculating me—just the two of us, her perfectly manicured nails digging into my cheeks—as she exaggerates the rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
    I do it as well as I can, trying so hard to please her and to get her to stop holding my face: Arggggggggggggg. I’m literally choking on my tongue.
    â€œCatch it, Lance. Catch the r, ” Christina says, peering down my mouth and throat like a family pediatrician. Her hope of getting me to catch my r so easily was as much a lucid pipe dream as hoping to get me to be the catcher in the rye—or maybe even more of a stretch, along the lines of simply trying to have me catch the wind.
    This went on and on. Every week we grew more frustrated until I finally taught myself to touch the bottom of my mouth with my tongue. I now curl my r’ s down, tapping the tip of my tongue on that funny little ball that holds the middle tendon under your tongue. Instead of touching the tongue toward the roof like most people, I steer it down and tag that ball. It may not be proper, but it works, and Christina isn’t a part of my life anymore.
    And my siblings were envious of the times Mom and Dad whisked me away….

5
    In the fourth grade, upon my request, Mom and Dad let me return to Pinesdale to spend a year there.
    It would be one of the most influential years of my life, transforming and drastically altering the way I saw myself, thanks to Aunt Sam and her young husband, Pax. Aunt Sam was, and still remains, a legend as a cradle robber, for she met her husband when he was fifteen and she was twenty-one. His name was “Pax” Virgil, Pax being a nickname for Edson, his cruel Christian name. Pax was my cousin on my father’s side, being the son of my father’s elder half-sister, and he married my Aunt Sam on my mother’s side, so it’s just one big web of relations. My siblings and I like to refer to him as “my cousin, Uncle Pax.”
    Pax was only twenty-one and Sam twenty-seven when I went to live with them. They were childless at that point, despite great efforts on their part to be otherwise. They saw having me live with them for the year as a great opportunity to hone some parenting skills. And boy, did I ever toe the line. I was their guinea pig. Nowadays I like to give Pax and Sam’s daughter, Kjes, and her half-siblings grief for how easy they have it. Sam was very impatient with me. She never let me pout or whine, and if I did so, she only added more chores to my list. Sam was having none of my garbage.
    Aunt Sam is sharp, fast, witty, and sarcastic, and boy, could that woman make a Saturday chore list. I was the male version of Cinderella:
Clean the kitchen.
Wash and put away dishes.
Sweep and mop the floor.
Vacuum room, hall, living room, and stairs.
Clean bathroom, scrub counters.
Clean up dog poop in backyard.
Rake up pine needles on both front and back lawns.
    The raking of the pine needles was the straw that broke my back. Unlike leaves, pine needles don’t respond to rakes. I have raked up leaves and am well aware of how frustrating and tedious the chore can be. But raking pine needles is like trying to rake up leaves with a spade. They weave into the prongs and block the traction of the rake. Plus, they poke you. They just poke.
    If I ever had qualms about my chore list, Sam was kind enough to explain the situation: “You’re not going to pout and be a little baby. That may work with your mother, but not with me it won’t. Each hour that goes by with all of these chores unfinished, another chore will be added. And believe me, I have lots of things I could have worked on right now.”
    All the while, Pax would sit in the front room, playing at reading a book, waiting for Sam’s back to turn on him so he could drop his book a little, point at me, and laugh over the top.
    Aunt Sam liked to starve me in an Oliver