…Write an evocative scene to convince the reader of its significance in your life.

It was like clockwork everytime my dad brought my brother and I to the shop while he worked on his stockcar before the upcoming race.  The smell of burnt metal clung to everything in the shop, with that sharp bitter stink.  First, we’d try and read and draw, but soon we’d become restless and bored.  Off we’d go to explore a building we’d wandered around a hundred times before.  Eventually, we’d get in trouble for playing with the compressed air and water sprays, get dragged from our hiding spots inside the racks of mufflers and pipes covered head to toe in oil, or yelled at for the umpteenth time to stop scrambling up the conveyer belt and riding it back down.

Having exhausted all other avenues of mischief, my eyes fall on the mechanic pits that ran across the shop floor.  Just over six feet deep and four feet wide, they were like a canyon to a 8-year-old.  Still, it was my goal to one day leap over it.  I decided today was that day.  I was going to bring up my inner Super Mario.

I set out into a run, watching the gap grow closer and closer with each step.  In my mind, the expanse grew outwards until it stretched out into infinity.  I wasn’t going to make it but it was too late to stop.  As my foot reached the lip of the pit, I had no other choice and I leaped into space.  Time stopped and I could look down into the void beneath me and, even as my foot landed safely on the other side, I was positive was I going to fall.

Momentum kept me going even as elation ran through me.  I’d made it on my first try!  This was the greatest day in my life.  Several more strides brought me to second pit and I jumped forward with all the confidence in the world.  That’s when I learned that the universe doesn’t care for cockiness.  I made it to the other side fine, my foot connecting with the ground.  Unfortunately, it was a little to far back and I landed on the lip, which stopped me dead in the air, even bouncing me back a bit, and allowing gravity to remind me man was never meant to fly.  I tried to grab onto the sides as they rushed past me, but only succeeded in colliding with the walls and turning me into a fleshy pinball before I landed in a heap on the concrete below.

I lay there in tears, having experienced victory and defeat in the same mere seconds.

Behind the Random: I spent a lot of time in that shop, plus my dad often came home from work with the smell of burnt metal on him, so that stink always takes me back to when I was kid.  It was a big part of my life for the first decade and even now, 20 years later, I’m still taken back to that place at the slightest whiff.