Mango Iced Tea with 1 Sweet'N'Low

     I can’t remember what grade I was in. I was in elementary school - below forth grade, I know that. I wannna say it was third grade.

We used to carpool with our neighbors to St. Thomas, which was like three minutes away driving. So, the Valeks picked me up in the mornings and my dad would ride his bike to work those mornings. Almost every time the Valeks took us, my dad would race us to school. Usually, we would beat him every time, because obviously we were in a car and he was on a bike.

But, one time, we raced to school. He said he was very reckless and rode through stop signs. But, one time he beat us there. He told me, before we left the house, that he wanted me to wait if we beat him there. So, we beat him and I remember coming home that night and he said that he had waited for me at the school and I had totally forgotten. I guess he was just sitting in front of the school, with his bike, waiting for us to come piling out of the car and we never did, because I guess we were already inside or something.

That night when he told me, I was really upset, but I didn’t want him to know I was upset. So, after he told me he had been waiting for me and I didn’t show up, I sat in the kitchen and cried. I was so sad because I had left him there all alone. To this day, I don’t think he knows that I cried after he told me, after he told me that I left him there alone. But, that will haunt me for the rest of my life, I swear. I still feel so guilty thinking about it. So, I guess this is my apology to my father for leaving him.

-Sophie, Legal Grounds

Americana

     It’s gonna get really depressing. In high school, I did a lot of drugs. I got caught by my parents. It was a huge deal with my family. Went through all that stuff.

     Afterwards, to show that they still trusted me, they got me a dog. It was a little puppy - shepherd mix. She was for the family, but really she was my dog.

I love her. She lives with my parents. I got back all the time and every time I go back she spends the whole day just sitting next to me. It’s the greatest thing ever. And that’s my story.

-Humza, The Pearl Cup

Passion Tea Lemonade

     My memory is pretty recent, but it’s something that’s been on my mind a lot. I’ve got this big bandage on my hand and it’s from soccer on Wednesday. I’ve been trying really hard to get the position of goalie on my team and be accepted, because I was told things like, “Women can’t be goalies,” and “You’re too fragile to be a goalie.”

In our first game of the season, I end up almost breaking my finger. It’s actually severely sprained. It happened when somebody tried to head the ball into the goal and they headed my head instead. So, really hoping they let me stay on as goalie.

     I’ve always had that problem. I used to do MMA [Mixed Martial Arts], and I got comments like that all the time. You know, like, “Why don’t you stay home and bake cookies?” or, “Bet you wish you had stayed in the kitchen.” You know, after losing a match in practice there would be these awful, misogynistic comments.

You know, now I am actually out of MMA because of injuries. I tore my ACL. I tore my meniscus. But each time I returned, and now I’m out permanently.

It always happens. Women face comments like that all the time. I thought I would be done with that when I left MMA, but even with intramural soccer, it’s alive. So, hopefully I’ll be back to being goalie next week, and for now, I get to walk around with this club-like bandage.

-Hannah, UTD Pub

Chai Latte with Milk

Chai Latte with Milk

     I’m going to give you the memory of my boyfriend and me and how we met. Falling in love, if you will.

So, it was about two years ago and I was in a really weird, strange place because I had just broken up with somebody - against my will - my mother had made me leave this person for certain reasons. So, I was just ready to not be in a relationship and date willy-nilly.

I signed up to be a tutor for the kids at the local junior college and I met Cameron, who seemed like this lone wolf at the time. I remember walking up to the building and he was standing outside, smoking a cigarette, and looking up at the sky, all by himself. I was like: you’re weird. It was really awesome, though.

At the time, I was actually dating another guy named Cameron, so it was kind of hard to keep the two separate. Then, other Cameron had taken me out for Valentine’s Day and my birthday is three days after Valentine’s Day. The Cameron that I’m with now ended up singing me a love song and giving me a kiss for my birthday and then there was no chance for anybody else. It was the end of all other guys in my mind.

For the first three months, we were just complete jerks to each other. You know, the back and forth playful banter. And then, this one time, I remember I insulted his GPA, because I had a perfect GPA at the time. And he was just like, “Can we stop being mean to each other now?” Then I remember, we were all standing out in the parking lot after tutoring and he asked me if I wanted to go out with him. Feeling the happiest that I have ever felt (I felt like I had just been proposed to, actually, it was THAT good). We’ve been together ever since. Hopefully, becoming engaged soon, after he graduates in the following semester.

-Alanah, The Pearl Cup

Latte

Latte

     The story I’m going to share today is kind of how I got interested in cars. When I was younger my dad had this XJ6 Jaguar and I loved that car. I wish he still had it. But, he gave it to my sister who drove it for a couple years and then it just fell apart and we had to sell it for scrap. What makes me so attached to that car is kind of how I learned to drive, per say? Considering I was like five or six, we had entered the alleyway to get to my garage and he put me on his lap and I would have the nice wooden steering wheel and drive down the alleyway without hitting anything. Not that my dad would have let me, he probably had his foot on the break the whole time. But, what was truly special about that car was, as a lot of people know, old Jaguars have possibly the worst electrics of any car on the planet Earth. None of them work. But, despite the fact that it was terrible, sitting in a leather car in the middle of summer. But, I adored that car. I saw past its faults. Needless to say, only some of the buttons worked. The radio worked, but other than that none of the electrics worked. Any button you pushed didn’t really do anything. So, my dad, me being like five or six, would pretend the car was like a submarine and pushing a button would launch a torpedo at unsuspecting cars that were apparently Japanese or German submarines or cargo ships or whatever it happened to be that day. Just the innocence of that car has grown into my love of cars.

-Geoff, Laguna Coffee