Today was the day.
I sat in Ms. Donelon’s third grade classroom listening to her read Holes by Louis Sachar, all the while wondering if I could do it. I mean, how could I? I was completely uncoordinated and could never focus on one thing.
There was something about being alone with my thoughts that terrified me. The waiting and the anxiety flooded in, as if Niagara Falls had started closing in on me. Each tick on clock tocked like a bass drum pounding in my ears. Then it struck: 10:25.
Ms. Donelon’s voice stopped abruptly and I got up from my seat, ignoring my friends as they beckoned me towards the playground. It was down there. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. But something pushed me out the classroom door and down the stairs anyway. I still don’t know what it was. It might have been a person.
I pushed the door open and was blinded by the flash of white mid-morning light that struck the world still. The scent of the mulch consumed my nostrils, and there was the monster’s long, tan, twisted snout spitting out other kids as if they weren’t good enough. I knew what it wanted. It wanted to eat me.
But it wouldn’t get to. Today I would stop that monster once and for all. There was no way it would beat me today. I approached the monster’s secret weapon, the one that had crushed me so many times, the one obstacle in the way of liberation: the monkey bars.
I jumped on and hung there. What was I doing? I couldn’t do this. I was too weak, too small, too unimportant. A burning sensation grew in my hands. The monster was fighting back. I fell to the ground defeated, blood trickling from my knee. A friend rushed to help me up. She stood up to face the monkey bars. “This is how you do it. See?” She flew across them, but then she slipped and fell before she got to the end.
I couldn’t let the monster defeat her too. I helped her up and went to try again. Focus. One hand after the other. Let’s go. I could do this. One, two three, leap! I spread my arms forward and back, moving with the bars that seemed to get farther and farther apart as I continued. One final leap! Come on!
My feet hit the edge. I turned back to look at the monster, but it wasn’t there any more. Instead I saw a friendly jungle gym, and the smile of a friend.
