Prithika's piece

I’ve never had a particularly high spice tolerance. That’s not to say I never ate spicy foods, I just ate them with a giant pitcher of water by my side, as I’m not a huge fan of milk. Anyway, for as long as I can remember, I’ve never been a fan of condiments either. I don’t really like ketchup since it tastes cloyingly sweet to me and I personally think mustard just tastes weird. That said, I didn’t hate condiments, I was just deterred away from trying a lot of them because of my distaste for the more common ones. One of the ones I stayed away from was Sriracha. I tend to stay away from most hot sauces in general, I just think every time you put hot sauce on anything you run the risk of masking all the flavor with an unholy amount of spice. At the same time, I wasn’t really thinking about any of that when my friends offered to make grilled cheese sandwiches at 4 in the morning. I happily approved of their decision. However, I was less happy when she pulled out the Kraft American ch...

It was an uneventful December evening and my mom and I were going to my brother’s school to pick him up. He was around ten at the time and went to my old elementary school. It was about ten minutes away and like usual, I spent most of the time trying to connect my phone to the car’s audio system and pick the perfect song for the mood at the time. Usually, it’d come from my winter Spotify playlist, but sometimes I like to switch it up and look for some new music. Before I knew it, we were in the parking lot of the school. Barkstall Elementary School. I walked outside. The playground looked different, I think they did renovations or something. There was no one on the equipment, it was empty. It was also cold outside, not weather suitable for having fun outside on some metal bars. I remember the tree in the corner where my friends and I would sit and eat lunch. There were a couple of new benches and you could see a small annex in the back of the school. It kind of looked like a sh...

Stress. Something universally experienced by all Uni students, heck, all high school students. Amidst the standardized testing, Ray’s infamous worksheets, and bio tests with no break in between, we’ve all had our moments of stress. It’s different for people. A lot of us like to think other people don’t have it as rough as us, as though their stress is no different than ours, but it remains a constant in people’s lives.  I like to look back at my middle school years or even my earlier Uni years and look at how stressed I was. I can remember specific moments vividly, how I felt at the moment. I remember feeling like there was no end, no matter how hard I tried. But people respond to stress differently. Stress in school back then was a reason for me to work harder, for me to motivate myself to get rid of it by being productive. But things have changed. I started stressing for different reasons. It wasn’t just school work, it became friends, sports, running out of time th...

My father came home with a box one day in 2008. I was six. My mom and I didn’t take much notice of it at the time, but he unwrapped it and started to set it up. When he was done, he called me over to proudly show what he had bought. It was a gaming console. It was a shiny white rectangle connected to our TV and had two matching wireless controllers. I was impressed. I asked him what it was; He called it a “Nintendo Wii.” We turned that bad boy on and started setting it up. We went through the works: names, WiFi connection, parental controls, making a Mii, all that jazz. At this point, I was ready to see what kind of games I could play, more importantly, what kind of games I could beat my dad at. I couldn’t wait. He pulled out a CD box with the words “Mario Kart Wii” written on them and there were two guys, one wearing red and one wearing green. They were both holding steering wheels. My dad put the CD in while I could barely contain my excitement.  We sat side by side on th...

My name. Prithika Ravi. Growing up surrounded by Sarahs, Taylors, Graces, and Ryans, I remember being around 7 or 8 and wondering why at the beginning of the year teachers would pause and look confused when it came time to say my name. I remember feeling like there was some sort of distinction between  me and Sarah or Jack-- like there was a spotlight on me. They apologized for not knowing how to pronounce it and I showed them. Pri-thi-ka , just like it’s spelled, I said patiently. They told me it was a pretty name. I tried to believe them, wondering if having a “pretty” name was worth the unwanted attention. By 5th grade, it was routine. Every time the school year started, if they stopped and looked confused during attendance, it was probably my fault. By that time, I had gotten everything from Pritheeka to Patricia. But this wasn’t their fault, they were just not accustomed to having a student with a name like mine. I was unique. That’s what I told myself. When it c...