Sunday Story- Chasten

Chasten- to make someone aware of a failure; to cause someone to feel embarrassed

Ex: Roger entered into his middle school science fair competition with high hopes for placing in a medal position. His experiment titled, “Tomoharu and the Bean Stalk: The Effects of Bean Sprout Consumption on Reductions in Asian Hate Amongst a Sample of Rural White Tweens” had been a painstaking endeavor to determine whether or not subtle introductions of bean sprouts into the school lunches of his peers would reduce their anti-Asian biases on subsequent implicit association tests. As the fair began, Roger nervously surveyed the room, keeping stock of the positions of the judges who were milling about. When the judges finally made their way over to Roger’s poster, they had nothing but great things to say about his concept and execution. They remarked on his impressive foresight in controlling for the presence of soy sauce, sesame, and other typical Asian ingredients in the students’ lunches. As the fair concluded, all exhibitors sat in rows of chairs in front of a stage where the medal recipients were to be announced. The bronze medal was awarded first to Kai, for her molecular analysis of bacterial content swabbed from the faculty restroom (which turned up, amongst other things, positive results for salmonella, herpes, and a slime mold growing on a Pizzeria Combos crumb). The silver medal went to Hugh for his correlational analysis of e-cigarette cloud size and earring gauge diameter. Roger was relieved to hear that his name was the one called to receive the ultimate prize: The Edward Hawking (Stephen’s able-bodied adopted brother with infinitely less science acumen) Elk Horn, Iowa, Middle School Science Fair Gold Medal. As Roger took the stand to deliver his victory speech, he suddenly felt uneased, as if he had forgotten something terribly important. He realized what it was. He hadn’t added bean sprouts to his pho earlier that afternoon in the cafeteria. He felt his mind swell with rushing thoughts, almost all of them inappropriate, accompanied by grainy mental images of bombs being dropped on some warships at a US naval base in a harbor on some Pacific island. When he finally opened his mouth, what came out was not any type of thank you provided to the judges or the science teachers that helped him achieve this honor. Instead, almost instinctually, he began to chasten Tadashi, a Japanese transfer student, for his childishly imbecilic vinegar and baking soda volcano. The judges ran to snatch the mic from Roger’s hands as he yelled, “IT’S THE BEAN SPROUTS! THE BEAN SPROUTS I TELL YOU!” through scream-cries and hyperventilated breaths. As the judges removed the medal from around Roger’s neck he darted to the edge of the stage and jumped over the leftmost chairs in the front row, torpedoing headfirst like a kamikaze pilot into Tadashi’s volcano diorama.