THE CHALLENGE
GRAPEY’S LIST THE LIST 1. Kiss a stranger 2. Go skinny-dipping 3. Steal something 4. Break something 5. Saliha 6. Ride a dern horse, ya cupcake 7. 55 S Ave, ask for Mona
8. The low-cut dress. And somewhere to wear it. 9. Dance until dawn 10. Share some secrets in the dark 11. Hug a Jamie 12. Apple picking at night 13. Sleep under the stars
As I was standing on the edge of a stranger’s pool, stark naked, worried about what other people had to say about my body, or in the middle of a very cold night, I knew I should have never possibly dying of hypothermia. joined Grapeshot. 2020 is the mark of a new decade, a completely new era for me to rediscover myself. So when I told the Grapeshot team I wanted to ignore what other people thought about me this year, I became the perfect sacrifice to do the Grapey’s List. Now, before the lawyers come at us to sue for copyright infringement, this is a disclaimer that the list is a slightly modified version of the original list taken from the book, Since You’ve Been Gone by Morgan Matson. I altered some of the challenges to make sure I was embarrassing myself to the maximum.
I stepped out of the bathroom and ran to my friend, who brought me to the party. He was quite drunk at that point of the night (like everyone else), so I had to repeat myself three times before he heard me say, “Do you think your friend will mind if I jump into his pool naked?” He looked blankly at me for a few seconds, before grabbing my hand and dashing towards the pool screaming, “Let’s do it!”
Now you might wonder, why did I decide to do a stupid middle-schooler list? To be honest, I don’t know. At first, I felt proud of myself for saying yes, but when I went home and actually read the list, a sense of uneasiness took over me. I was suddenly aware that I would be exposing myself, literally.
Now, I’m not completely sure on how the host of the party reacted to this, because as I started taking my dress and underwear off, literally everyone had caught on to what was happening and decided suddenly that getting into the pool was the best thing ever. I wasn’t complaining at all, because as I stood at the edge of the pool, contemplating what my strict brown father would have to say to this, a naked girl next to me extended her hand, and it was all the courage I needed.
Growing up, I had been extremely conscious of how I looked. I was used to the constant “lanky, stick-like, and thin” remarks I received, but it didn’t mean I was resistant to them. So I had internally decided that I would skip the “skinny-dipping” task and make up some excuse. But when I showed up at a party that had a swimming pool, I was conflicted. I remember locking myself in the bathroom and just staring at myself in the mirror. Essentially, the decision was between living a life where I was
That night was perhaps one of the best I’ve had since I moved to Sydney. It wasn’t necessarily because I faced my biggest fear, it was the response I received when I told that girl one of my biggest secrets. Under the dark starry night, I found myself thanking her for helping me jump and telling her that I was afraid I would be judged for my stretch marks. I still recall vividly that she simply laughed and said, “They’re not stretch marks, they’re tiger stripes.”
22 || REGULARS
