Chapter 1: You Have to Start
Somewhere
We’d
all like to say that we grew up as the kid down the street. You know, the one who was good at sports, attractive,
good in school, and volunteered at the animal shelter in their spare time. You obviously must think that this fine
description of a human being must have been me.
No? Yeah, I don’t either.
Instead
of Adonis child picture a gangly, lanky, glasses-wearing, recluse who was
rather good at Pokémon in his basement, who also enjoyed sewing and
cooking. Now we’re getting somewhere in
the ballpark.
Try
as my father did, I never excelled in sports (soccer mainly due to my Bolivian
heritage) and was that nerdy quiet kid in school who the teachers loved and
other kids associated with. It
definitely wasn’t much to start from, but at least it was something.
Despite
my obvious street cred, there were others who didn’t express joy in my general
company which takes us to a warm spring day in 5th grade.
Even
though I had had my best friend move at least a state away from my city
consecutively for the past five years (yes, five friends moved away from me in
elementary school, can you say popular?) I had started to break out my
hermit-like shell and try and make a new friend. Like me, Joe** was gangly and awkward and
generally speaking, it doesn’t take much to constitute friendship for 11 year
olds. We spent many a day looking at
clouds or him playing basketball while I did the best I could to fake it. What more could I ask for? A trust fund, but at this time I wasn’t
concerned with such things. What I got
instead was the baggage that came along with my new friend.
Since
I was now at a New Elementary school (the previous had been closed and turned
into a deaf and blind school) I was easy prey for those with low
self-esteem. Joseph had been attending
this school from the beginning of his education meaning he the other kids and
had previous friends. One in particular
was Sam. Maybe it was my large Harry
Potter-like glasses or my obvious disinterest and lack of talent at sports that
enticed him to choose me as his personal entertainment, I’ll really never
know. What I did know was that Sam did not
like me and due to some cosmic joke, he and Joe were rather good friends.
Well
one day as I usually did on a lot of school days, I invited Joe over to my
house to “hang-out” since cool kids “hung-out,” they didn’t “play.”
“Hey is it all right if
Sam comes with me?” He said on the phone when I called.
“Oh…yeah sure, why not?”
I replied, probably some small twinge of terror/death in my voice.
How could my best friend
be bringing my worst enemy to my house?
I’d just have to deal with it I figured.
Some minutes passed as I
awaited their arrival until I finally heard the doorbell ring. I turned the door, saw both their faces,
pushed the screen door open and was then suddenly pelted in the face. I sat there confused as I saw a little piece
of my paper fall to the ground and my friend and nemesis running away
laughing. “What just happened?” I
thought to myself and then decided to open the paper on the ground. In crude 11 year old writing was one word
scribbled hastily:
LOSER
*To clarify: I jump around with the chapter numbers since I felt like that's where they'd be in the book if I actually wrote a book. This is chapter 1. I felt like it should have been first, so it is. One thing that frustrated one reader of my story was also how it abruptly ended a lot. Explanation for that: It's more like a preview of a book than an actual book. I couldn't just keep writing forever people, loosen your choker necklaces. What? No one wears those anymore? Oh, that was the 90's you say... *rolls into the street*
**I've changed the names from my original story just in case you might actually know these people. I think it's a common courtesy.
No comments:
Post a Comment