In an act of true bravery and unabashed confidence, 31-year-old Tara List successfully threw a stray ball back to some youths in the park today.
“It still doesn’t feel quite real,” says Tara. “I think my adrenaline is just going right now. Maybe tomorrow I’ll really process what just happened.”
The event took place when a group of teens informally playing soccer in the park kicked their ball too far, and it rolled right up to Tara, who was pretending to read under a tree.
“Time stood still in that moment,” Tara recounts. “I saw the ball coming. I looked down at it, then up at the expectant youths’ faces, and I knew what I had to do.”
Although Tara resolved to take up the hideously vulnerable and embarrassing act of throwing a stray ball back to some youths, she knew it wouldn’t be easy, and it wasn’t.
“There were so many questions in my head, but I knew I had to act fast,” she says. “For one thing, it was a soccer ball, and from I understand from watching Ted Lasso, those are primarily meant to be kicked. But I was seated, so it’s not like I was going to stand up and then attempt kicking this ball back to them.”
While one of the young lads was already gently jogging toward Tara to retrieve the sports sphere, witnesses report she picked up the ball and threw it underhand to the boy who, what’s more, actually caught it.
“To live in a body is so terrible,” Tara says. “But today, despite the pressure, despite the wind, despite having a Thinx wedgie, my body did right by me.”
Tara’s astonishing bad-assery has not gone unnoticed by the community.
“I can’t believe it,” says one witness, Misha Wright. “I know for sure that if a ball rolled over to me, I would simply let the youth jog all the way over to where I sat and retrieve it, then I’d make awkward eye contact and smile at them as they picked up the ball right by my feet.”
“Just thinking about it sends shivers down my spine,” Misha adds. “But I guess some people are just built different.”
We guess so! Keep killing it, T!
