Big Whiff

I see the world around me in a big blurry mess out of nervousness. To my left I see houses and the rusty metal shop building. To my right the big brick school and all of its students peering outside wishing they could experience the beautiful weather. Although it was a beautiful sun shiny day I hated it. I meekly walked up to the squishy baseball mat with a bat too large for my small size and watched my teacher slowly toss the ball up towards me and I watched it fly past me. I heard the rest of the students chuckle behind me. I took a big swallow of my sticky saliva and awkwardly held up my bat waiting for the ball to come to me again. I see the people on second and third base waiting for me to hit a homerun so we could make a lead in the score, which only put more pressure on this hit that I didn’t need. Again I watch the ball come softly soaring towards me and I knick it away off to the foul lines. Not only do I hear the people around me snicker, I can hear the laughter of the people in the cars passing by in the street ahead and the houses hiding behind the trees to the left, one belonging to the home of my sister’s good friend. I was waiting to go home and have my sister and parents be laughing at what happened in gym class today because they were peering out of their windows watching me in my humiliation. I took a deep breath hoping that it would calm me down and I would be able to keep my eye on the ball as they always say, but to no avail. I whiffed again. More chuckles. I began to sweat because I realized that I was going to be standing at that base for a long time considering there was no three strikes and you’re out rule. You just stand there, soaking in humiliation and wait until you can tap the ball somewhere onto the open green field. I watched my gym teacher’s eyes as he tossed the ball so carefully to me trying to make certain that I could hit it, but even the helpful and encouraging eyes couldn't help me hit that silly, white, holy whiffle ball. I start to hear numbers called out from the long curvy line of onlookers behind and to the left of me. They were out of sight, but not out of ears reach and nothing I could do would keep them out of my frantic head. I remember thinking,” I am sooo glad Chris isn’t here to see this” as I hit another foul ball. I hear someone whisper, “Eleven” in a taunting voice behind me. I swear ten minutes had passed as I was still standing by the dirty and beat up home plate, most likely because it had. I look back with a look of apology to the rest of my class waiting for their turn at bat and see that people had become restless and were sitting on the ground picking at the grass. I look back at my teacher just hoping that he would have pity on me and let me go to the back of the line so I could hide from all of the eyes, but instead he was still standing on the mound waiting for me to let him know when I’m ready. The ball inched towards me and I heard a pop at the end of this clumsy piece of plastic in my hands and realized I had actually hit the ball on the field, it took me fourteen tries, but I hit it in play! In the ten minutes I was standing there I almost forgot the rules and my running was delayed, but that embarrassment paled in comparison. My brain had a huge sigh of relief as I timidly walked to the end of the line. Thankfully I didn’t hear another word about it that day at school which I couldn’t have been happier about. From that point on, I have only watched baseball.