By the beginning of 7th grade, I had grown bored with myself. After walking the track around the football field for almost all of my first year of middle school, I’d run out of interesting things to discuss. There was only so much to be said about basketball, language arts, and fantasy books, especially when the only contributor in such conversations only had one perspective. The lonely perspective.
The only things keeping me from complete emotional, pubescent collapse were the three things I talked to myself about. Basketball, writing, and books. Writing and reading were things I pretty much did exclusively by myself, and that never bothered me. But basketball was something you kind of needed another person for. And for me, I would have preferred that person to be a boy, because girls were either really nasty (as in the second definition for the word historically used to refer to female dogs) or really dainty. Who wanted to play a dainty game of basketball?
And I was in luck, or so I thought at the time. After finishing my second lap around the football field one day at lunch with plenty of time still left to waste, I caught a glimpse of three boys meandering in my general direction. At this point, I was almost to the point of the track directly parallel with the blacktop and its six basketball hoops. As far as I could tell, that’s where the boys were going, judging by the angle of their gait and the half deflated, school issued basketball in their hands.
I didn’t give myself time to think. Our paths crossed, and I stepping in front of them, causing the boys to stop and stare at me incredulously. “Are you going to play basketball?” I asked, seeing as it was the first thing to come to mind.
The most confident of the three, a boy just slightly shorter than me with dark green eyes and an indeterminate dark hair color, glanced at the basketball in his hands and then back at me. “Yes…” he replied, as if talking to someone who was mentally slow. I’ll admit I wasn’t particularly “all there” at that moment, amazed at my own assertiveness.
“Can I play?”
The two other boys glanced at who I assumed was their unofficial leader. “Sure.” the dark haired boy finally answered, somewhat hesitantly. I smiled and fell into step with them as they headed to the courts.
Later, I discovered that the dark haired boy was in my advanced math class, and his name was Dylan.
Disclaimer: I swear I’m done writing about Dylan for a while, but I was reminded of the incident today when I walked past him after school. I was finishing debate practice and he was finishing cross country practice. I was directly in his line of vision for at least fifteen seconds, and he made a conscious effort not to make eye contact. Instead of upsetting me, this little act of immaturity just struck me as hillarious. Progress, I think. Additionally, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more unflattering haircut on anyone, at least not once all the boys started to outgrow the bowl cut that moms seem to find adorable.
I smiled confidently the whole way home.
