Creative nonfiction by Elisa C.
A game Issac Wagner and I would always play was “tag the loser.” It would just be us two, and sometimes my little brother, but we’d just be looking and laughing at each other the whole time. If you were tagged, then you were a loser and had to tag the other person again. It was a perpetual cycle of entertainment at formals and parents’ parties and awkward preschool dinners where our teachers would tell Issac’s parents how great his grades were and mine how nice and quiet I was. It was usually split pretty evenly on who was it or not. Even though I was probably physically faster than Issac, he was more clever than me, and so I really wasn’t any faster or slower than Issac, and it was just a mess of heat and excitement. Sweaty palms slapped across arms, warm breaths melting across each others’ faces. We never spoke about serious things or how each new seating arrangement we wanted to be next to each other–I’m not sure we even wished so much– just when we were near each other, we would play. Youth was, perhaps truly, if boiled down to, a brief moment of simplicity. It was a time of whoever was there and matched your speed.
Tag the loser. You’ve got to grow up if you don’t continue playing this game with me, here, right now; don’t be a loser.
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