I was the girl who stood there and waited for the ball to hit her during dodge ball. I was the girl who always got picked last for teams. I was the girl who was always the last to finish laps. I was the girl who hardly tried to hit the ball during volleyball.
One particular agonizing day my freshman year of high school, we were playing badminton. The class was split into four groups. There were four nets set up, two on each side of the gym, next to the bleachers. The wooden bleachers were connected to the wall and opened and closed with the touch of a button. When they were closed, they were like a ten-foot tall ladder against the wall.
I was placed in a group with five freshman boys. Unfortunately, they were the most immature boys in the class; the boys who thought they were good at everything. These were the boys whose purposes in life were to show off. They were the boys who thought they could impress the pretty, popular girls with their athletic ability. It was a wonder they were some of the most popular boys in the freshman class.
It was a time to get into our groups. The boys in my group ran over to the net, making jokes and calling out insults to a particular chubby kid they enjoyed making fun of. I sighed. This is going to be a long day, I thought as I dragged myself to the net where the boys were trying to decide who would play first. I hated seeing other people being made fun of, although I was always too shy to stick up for them.
The class was signaled to start playing. I sat with my back to the bleachers watching everybody play. I noticed that no one in the class could play very well, not even the boys in my group. To compensate for their inability to play the game well, they goofed off instead, trying to hit the birdie across the gym, up into the ceiling, or into the bleachers.
As they played, they yelled across the gym at the other people who couldn't play, but were actually trying.
