Why I Write

They called me the gentle giant.

I waited the whole season, warmed the bench, and wore navy and gold sports socks pulled all the way up to my knees like a dork so I could match my teammates' socks and those polyester gold shorts and tops we had to wear. I cheered the girls and shouted at the referee for his idiocy and I looked intermittently at Coach, to see if she would let me onto the court.

I played well enough during scrimmages. The ball plunged into the basket, or rolled around the rim to score. I passed over up-stretched arms, blocked and dribbled. I ran fast. But in the game, when the ball finally came to me, I held it to my chest with both damp palms gripping the sphere. I gawked about bewildered at the crowd, at the coach, at my teammates open for a pass, and I froze. If someone bumped me trying to get to the ball, I would say, "Oh, excuse me...Oh, sorry, excuse me."

I wasn't great at sports, despite what an athletic build and some height might say. I was prone to social awkwardness too. The inevitable wrong thing would pop out of my mouth and apparently I gave looks that seemed painfully slighting. I didn't know what to talk about with my peers at practice between plays. I couldn't give compliments, let alone take them well and most of my jokes were duds or puns that evoked blank blinks and quick intakes of air. At the pizza parties, not knowing what to say, I listened to all the girls jabber about this or that and I choked down slices, and gulped down Dr. Pepper to dislodge the cheese from my throat.

My mother wouldn't ever let me play sports again after that year, anyway. She attended one game and decided that was all she needed to see. My friend Camille with the braces tripped and knocked faces with another girl, whose lip caught onto Camille's metal braced teeth. Blood puddled on the court and both girls were helped to their respective benches. The blood and braces put the fear of broken limbs and torn skin into Mom's imagination.

While the principal read the team's successes the next morning over the intercom, I listened to the feats and scores of my teammates, and I wrote in my journal about being nerved out over it all and about how Mom wouldn't let me play anymore and how I was sad about it. I knew that not playing the next year would mean deeper separation from the peers I had played with that year and I wrote about that too.

Writing wasn't a new thing. I had been writing since I knew how. I wrote letters for play-pretend in grade school. I even tried to write a little novel about a family of beavers who never seemed to need to come up for air. When I realized writing could bring recognition, the habit was reinforced. In the third grade, Emily Trunket read some silly poem she had written in front of the class. I thought her work piddle. I had been writing copy-changed limericks and nursery rhymes for many months already. I in turn wrote a poem that my teacher so loved, I not only got to read it for the class, but I got to take it to the principal's office with a little waterfall pasted to it (by the teacher). It looked like a page straight from an inspirational calendar.

My eighth grade English teacher had a workshop surrounding one of the poems I had written outside of school and had shared with her. Although I had been writing all that time before, I had never had such an active audience. A group of thirty or more of my peers were held captive in a class over my work, and they were discussing it! This was like a dream come true. I've craved its repetition ever since.