Simone

The highlight of my day is whacking a neon orange puck around for 30 minutes during gym class. This time is spent most usefully when I violate the gym class’s set rule that sticks cannot be raised past the knee, and repeatedly smack the ball with such great force that it reaches the opposite end of the court, making a score easier. A score is the goal because a score is validation. A reminder that my effort is worth something.

Gym class is my only means to dominate an otherwise pathetic day. At school, my lackluster work ethic and diminishing respect from teachers mean I feel shitty pretty much all the time. Bittersweet apathy has come to guide my academic decision-making, which explains the poor quality of my academic decision-making. Staying home, missing assignments, skipping class, tuning out to doodle and list, napping. I feel uninspired and bored. Numb. Dull. I’m so sick of my routine.

Sport is routine, but it’s also chaos. The structure of a play can only outline possible outcomes, it can’t predict chance encounters with the ball, or factor in the distraction of yellow pinnied brunette girl whose aloofness will grant me the opportunity to pass to my friend in front of the unmanned goal.

Sometimes, I feel guilty about the student I’ve become. I know I’m intelligent and caring and that I like thinking and doing. I want people to know that, but I don’t have the wherewithal to throw myself into a curriculum from which I’ve become so detached. Even if I did, how pointless would it be to do this with six weeks of high school left?

The easiest way to assert the persistence of my determination and skill is through physical action. I end each day sweat stained and tired, but accomplished.

Am I a jock now? ♦