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It sounded sort of like a thud. Actually, when I think of it, it was more of a thump followed by a whack. The thump being the ball hitting me square in the face and the whack being my head hitting the gymnasium floor. It wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t paying attention - he should’ve seen that. I was talking to a friend on the sidelines of an intramural basketball game and for some reason, my teammate decided that I looked like a perfect person to pass the ball to. Yeah, I know that I should’ve been ‘tuned into the game’ as my coach would say, or I should’ve been ‘looking for what to do next’ as my dad says, but you usually only do that when you’re actually checked in and playing. That’s the strange part, I wasn’t even on the court at the time. The friend that I was talking to was playing, but me, I was riding the pine, keeping the seat warm, or whatever cliché you can think up to say that I was sitting out at the time. Anyway, I turned just in time to get a glimpse of the orange rubber flying towards my face. After this registering in my mind as a future painful experience, I decided that I should attempt to dodge or maneuver out of the way of the projectile labeled Spalding. “Too little too late” is what my mom would’ve said as the rubber dimples of the ball skipped across my face feeling as though it was taking layers of skin with it. Lucky for me, the impact of the ball was broken a little by my nose. After the connection between the ball and my organ of smell was made, there was a brief second of silence, during which I realized…“Ouch!”. As the moment passed I threw my hands directly to my face with enough force to knock myself off the bench and straight onto the hardwood floor behind me. I don’t know if you’ve ever fallen on a gymnasium floor or not, but when you do, it’s not exactly an experience you’d like to live through twice. Yeah, the court was hard, but what made it worse was all the laughter that I heard. No “Are you okay”’s and no “Oh my gosh”’s, only laughter. Even my parents and the coach couldn’t stop laughing long enough to check and see if I was okay. Being the tough guy that I was, or at least thought I was, I got right back up and sat on the bench, a little red from embarrassment and a little more red from the blood trickling down my nose.
That is what I still consider to be one, note that I say one, of the many horrible experiences I have had to play through in this game of my life. Little did I know that week of December, back in fifth grade, would be the worst of weeks for me, at least up to now. It was one of those weeks that you can remember piece by piece no matter how long ago it was. Sort of like a movie that you’ve seen over and over. Something like Star Wars - you remember it perfectly and you almost know what is going to happen next. But, like I said, I had no clue what the future held for me this week.
Living through the basketball incident was easy, now failing tests and getting beat up during lunch was a little bit harder to handle. I would go to school everyday knowing that I had a test or a quiz and also knowing that I didn’t study the night before. I didn’t really care for some reason. I guess I was lazy. I’d step into my reading class, my science class, or my math class, take the test and fail - willingly. Just so happens that week, I had two tests in math, one in science, and three in reading and I failed every single one. So my school days weren’t going so hot. The teachers noticed and sent home a progress report to my parents that said “Your child has a room temperature IQ”. Maybe not that exactly, but something of the sort. My parents got upset and grounded me like all parents do.
So I sat in my room crying because I was grounded - remember I was only in fifth grade so crying was okay back then. After about a half-hour of the whining and crying stuff I got a little mischievous, a little adventurous. I had a bowling pin that I received at my birthday party at Thunderbird Lanes. It had my name, date, and the score that I bowled that day on it. I pretty much sucked at bowling, my score was a 71, and that’s even with those bumper balloons that prevent the balls from going into the gutter. That’s really bad now that I think of it! Anyway, I took this pin and tried to stack stuff on top of it and under it. I had it pretty high until I had the bright idea of putting it all onto a skateboard. To make a short story shorter, the skateboard moved and so did the stack of stuff - the skateboard to the side, and the stack of stuff down. Everything hit the floor except for the pin, that solid piece of white wood smashed me right in the face, plastering my nose that was beaten so brutally the night before with a basketball.
I went to school the next day with one of those really cool white bandages on my face. I looked like I just had a nose job or something. This giant brace on my face made me an easy target for the bullies, so after two days of being tormented I decided to take it off when I got to school. Did the bullies go away? No, they came back even harder this time wanting my lunch. Being the kind and generous child that I was, and the extremely scared of being pulverized child that I was, I gave it up easily and with no complaints. That was Wednesday and Thursday but, when Friday came around I decided to take a stand. I was too hungry to feed the needy. I went to lunch holding my brown paper bag so tight that I squeezed the life (and jelly) out of my sandwich. I thought the coast was clear when I sat down, but then, the biggest of the biggest bullies came over to me. He was huge, probably only five foot four but in fifth grade that’s humongous! When you’re that big you have the right to be a bully. He came up to me and grabbed at my bag but I held it back. After about thirty seconds of this tug of war with the big guy and my lunch, I thought I should let go before he got mad. So I did and my hand swung back and smacked me right in the face - right in the still sore, unhealed nose. The same nose that was clubbed with a bowling pin and hit with a basketball earlier that week. Of course, it started to bleed and of course and I started to cry.
That week ended quickly, but seriously had taken about three years out of me. Other weeks passed and other incidents happened, but everything that happened to me that week turned out for the better. After the struggle with the biggest of the biggest bullies, I was sort of admired by fellow students and gained more respect and friends. With that happening, I came up with a perfect equation: MORE FRIENDS = LESS ENEMIES and LESS ENEMIES = FEWER BULLIES TO PUT UP WITH. Speaking of equations, those progress reports taught me to study or be grounded, so I did better on math tests and tests in every other subject. With weeks, days, hours, or whatever you have like this week that I had, you become stronger and you realize how much is determined by what you do and what could happen if you don’t do something. That makes you wonder what would’ve happened if my week went well and I didn’t get picked on or hit in the nose continuously? But that, I believe, would be another story.
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