**This is a fictional short story about our experiences, as a team, on the public transportaion in Honduras. Some of the details are truth, but most are not; I will let you decide what is true and what is false.
Today was the first day that team zeroH, from O Squad, rode on the public transportation in Honduras, and boy oh boy was it an adventure…
The morning started dark and early at 4:15am for some, and later for others; depending on how long they needed to get ready. The team ate breakfast and went to catch the bus. The bus almost made it’s way down the mountain without the team, but team zeroH was able to flag them down just in time at around 5:15am.
The team, still half asleep, made their way up the bus steps to the harsh reality that there were no more empty seats on the bus. That meant it was time for aisle surfing all the way down the mountain. Luckily nobody fell on their faces, but then there was the man in the grey sweater.
This was a man of mystery; nobody could quite figure him out, but as he pushed and shoved his way through the aisle he cautiously pointed out the man with the machete. What would the team do? The man with the machete had that look of crazy in his eyes and none of them knew what would happen next! When suddenly Christine noticed the man in the grey sweater again; he was motioning for the team to move to the back of the bus with him.
As inconspicuously as possible the seven of them moved to the back of the bus, where the man in the grey sweater used a translator to tell the team that the man with the machete was not a man to mess with, but we had already gotten in his way while aisle surfing down the mountain. They all started to freak out when the man in the grey sweater slapped them all in one fluid motion to gain their attention. Once they were all calmed down and focused on him again, the man in the grey sweater told them that there was only one way to get out of the situation alive.
He had the teams undivided attention as he continued to tell them that at the next bus stop there would be a man selling cereal, but his milk would not come from the gallon like normal, but instead the man would have it stored in a 5 gallon igloo cooler. He continued to explain that the milk was laced with some natural enhancer that would take the teams strengths and intensify them times 100. The team was blown away by this notion because they knew that together they could find their way out of this difficult situation.
Eventually the bus made it to the next stop, where the man with cereal was waiting to sell some goods! The team quickly ran to the cereal man because the crazy look in machete man’s eyes was getting more loco by the minute and the team didn’t want to take any chances on this one!
They gave him 50 Lempira, which is like $2.50 in American dollars and all drank the milk as fast as they could! The man in the grey sweater was right, their talents were all enhanced by 100 percent, it was incredible!! Jake knew exactly what you were thinking just by looking at you, Jah-Jah’s smile was so bright that it could blind you, Karilyn could think through a situation so quickly that she always knew just what to do, Carrie had these insane dance moves that were better than Karate, Christine was so in tune with what everybody wanted to happen that she was able to assist everybody, Savannah started making these crazy faces that could distract anybody from anything and Emily had the incredible ability to ask the right questions to know exactly what the root of your issues are!
The team turned around to prepare themselves to confront the issues with machete man; but they couldn’t find him anywhere! They ran out to the road, where they last saw him, and saw as he was running in the opposite direction as quickly as he could. The team thought that this simply could not be the final outcome; so they ran through the ally ways to catch up with machete man. Once they got to him he was terrified! He fell to his knees, threw his machete down, and cried out for mercy!
The fearless leader of Team zeroH, Jake calmly stepped up to machete man, put his hand on his shoulder, and told him to stand up; that they weren’t going to hurt him, they simply wanted to give him some advice, otherwise known as feedback, on the whole situation.
Savannah stepped up to the man and told him, “You are incredibly gifted at using your machete, you are so good at it! You can spin it around and around and not cut yourself one time! That is incredible! But the truth is that the whole situation between you and us was a simple misunderstanding, and had you simply asked us to be more careful in the aisle a whole lot of fear and negative use of energy could have been avoided. So instead of getting violent next time, simply use your words to express your feelings!”
They all gave machete man a hug and prayed with him before running to catch the next bus out to the country.
