It was a quarter to four when I pulled into a second row parking space. I pulled my little backpack from the back seat and walked towards the school. You could see the girls soccer team warming up before their game from the lot. What a dumb sport, soccer. I guess high school is better than professional soccer, I mean at least the high school players aren’t all prima donnas. Any way you slice it though, it’s just so goddam boring. It really is. I remember one year after watching the World Cup, I thought to myself, “If I wanted to watch a bunch of foreign people dive, I could’ve just waited a couple years for the Olympics.” But there they went, just kicking that damn ball at the net. As I walked up to the locker room hallway, I snickered as a few shots flew unnecessarily wide of the net.
I hurriedly walked down the hallway towards the varsity locker room. I didn’t expect many people to be there because it was so early. There were a few kids in the front of the locker room when I walked in.
“Are you pumped Cam? Huh, are you ready? Woooo!” One of them screamed in my face.
I threw a half hearted laugh and replied, “Yeah man” then went to the shower area. It is a shower area but it had been converted a while ago to a sitting area. It has six or seven chairs, a table, a plastic cubby thing, and a couple wood benches. I can imagine those damn kids smuggling in those old, unwanted chairs, and where they found those goddam benches, who knows. Then they’d all high five, that killed me. It would be like one of those movie scenes where everyone lights up a celebratory cigar and revels in their masterpiece. In this case, their masterpiece was seven crumby chairs and a couple ancient benches jammed into a smelly room. Some of those guys went on to do great things with football. They really did. One guy went on to play on the Baltimore Ravens practice squad. One year he was offered a deal with the goddam New York Giants, but the goon turned it down. The next season those damn Giants went on to beat the Patriots in the Superbowl. Some guy from small town maine almost got himself a goddam Superbowl ring. I sat down in my chair and tried to simmer down from that ass screaming in my face. Stupid kid, he’s lucky I didn’t give him what for. I hate it when kids do that. I really do. I closed my eyes and breathed in the dank air of the locker room. The air was thick and smelled of eight weeks of sweat and dirt. It didn’t make my head cold any better either, that’s for sure. I put a shirt over my face to try to dull the goddam smell, but it was already stuck in my nose. You’re supposed to get used to smell after a while, but not this smell, every week added a new damn layer to get used to.
Finally someone walked to shower area. It was Cody another lineman on the team.
“How you doing, big guy?” he asked me. He always calls people “guy.” Sometimes “big guy,” “tough guy,” any variation really, he’s a hick like that. He has a full chin-strap beard unlike my clean face. I’ll admit, I can’t grow facial hair, just more peach fuzz, but his beard always looked a little unkept to me.
“I’m fine,” I lied. I wasn’t fine. I really wasn’t. I was nervous off my ass and my head was banging away.
“You ready for tonight?” he asked.
What a dopy question. As if a goddam third year letterman, who’s a captain of the team and the most experienced kid on the whole line wouldn’t be ready for a game. I looked back at him and said, “Oh shore,” in a thick accent to mimic his voice.
“Goddamit, Cam.” We both chuckled.
At that point a few other kids had come in and taken a seat. Luke, Nate, Matt, and Damon had made their way into the shower area. Matt was the starting running back on our team, the best damn athlete too. He really was. Strong as hell and get that kid in a pair of shoulder pads with field of green in from of him, no one was going to catch him, and I’m sure of that. I’d been on the team with him since the sixth grade. Not only that but somehow I always found myself being his lead blocker. I was probably connected with him more than anyone else on the damn team. When we were younger I remember blocking for Matt. There was one play where I blocked some dinky kid out. I always blocked out for Matt. He always seemed to run in, even when coach would tell the damn kid to run out, he’d run in. So I blocked out and sure enough, 60 yards later, Matt was in the end zone. That kid came trotting back to the huddle, celebrating with everyone and giving high fives. Then he looked me right in the goddam eye and said, “Cam, that was your touchdown.” He really meant it too. I don’t remember Matt ever saying much on the field except for that. I didn’t even know what to say to that except a surprised “thanks.” I can replay that moment over and over again. I’ll admit, there’s some kind of satisfaction I get when Matt scores. I mean scoring is great either way, but when Matt scores it feels like there’s seven years behind it.
Anyway, more people started to come into the shower area and get their gear on. Damon started to crank some kind of crappy music. The music these kids listen to is so crumby. I have to admit though, sometimes when those damn kids start to dance, I have to too. It’s good to loosen up before a game and relax your mind a bit.
More and more kids had their game pants and socks on so I followed suit. The guys started to settle from their dancing, and took seats in the shower area. If there was anything that could silence an aggressive football player is was the realization that his last homecoming game was in two damn hours. And even though no one ever said it, you sort of knew those two hours were going to be the fastest two hours of your life.
Coach came in and gathered us all in the front of the locker room. That damn smell seemed to lift a little, maybe it was just the open door. I liked coach, he had a way with words. I mean, I’ve said some pretty good speeches to the guys, but mine were all premeditated. Coach would come up in front of all of us and he would just spill, it’s almost like decades of football just fell out on to the goddam floor right in front of our feet. He was one of the only people in this damn school who knew how hard we had it. We tried to tell our case to other kids in the school, but kids who don’t know first hand to what you’re going through will always be ignorant to it. He knew it, and the team knew it. But no matter what the score was he was always there for us, he promised us that. And boy if he had anything it was his damn word.
Anyway he left after his speech and we retreated back to the shower area to get the rest of our gear on. Those goddam shoulder pads clicked and the metal tips on our cleats clacked on the tile as the guys made their way out of the locker room. I was the last one out. I took a deep breath, so deep it hurt my damn lungs. It really did. I breathed in all eight weeks of sweat and dirt, those damn celebrating kids, the ancient wooden benches, that kid who almost got the Superbowl ring, took it all with me and got the hell out of there.
Evaluation:
This is hands down my favorite essay I’ve ever written. Like I said in my intro letter, I finally got to write about football without it being a play-by-play or a cheesy “I didn’t win the game but here’s what I learned” reflection paper. I pulled out every image and memory I had from football and put it into this piece. One thing that made this piece very enjoyable to write was the fact that Holden is very easy to imitate. His dialect is very noticeable. To write this piece I basically put my story to the hymn of Holden. My strongest paragraph in this story is the third, where I talk about what it would’ve been like when the guys first but the chairs in the shower area. There was a good flow of crumby things, italics, and running off on tangents. It was also good because Holden reminisces a lot in Catcher in the Rye, so that worked well too. Football is very close and personal to me. This makes it easy to write about. I have noticed that throughout the year when I get to choose my topic I usually enjoy the essay more. This is because I can write about a topic I’m either interested in or can relate to somehow.
I feel that my use of imagery in the story was strong. Like when our coach would talk it was like “decades of football just fell out on to the goddam floor right in front of our feet.” As for organization since there wasn’t a thesis statement, I can’t say my topic sentences related back to my thesis. Whenever I went into a tangent story though, I came back to where I left off so I wasn’t jumping around. This essay was really a coming together of my 1st semester skills. It was organized, the story was in chronological order. I didn’t use my voice in the story because the assignment was to use Holden’s. Since he’s a teenager our style of talking is very similar which made it easy to write in. There were very few grammatical and spelling errors as well. I may be a little partial to the story because it’s my story about football, but I still enjoy it a lot.
Period 3
10/9/12
The Shower Area
It was a quarter to four when I pulled into a second row parking space. I pulled my little backpack from the back seat and walked towards the school. You could see the girls soccer team warming up before their game from the lot. What a dumb sport, soccer. I guess high school is better than professional soccer, I mean at least the high school players aren’t all prima donnas. Any way you slice it though, it’s just so goddam boring. It really is. I remember one year after watching the World Cup, I thought to myself, “If I wanted to watch a bunch of foreign people dive, I could’ve just waited a couple years for the Olympics.” But there they went, just kicking that damn ball at the net. As I walked up to the locker room hallway, I snickered as a few shots flew unnecessarily wide of the net.
I hurriedly walked down the hallway towards the varsity locker room. I didn’t expect many people to be there because it was so early. There were a few kids in the front of the locker room when I walked in.
“Are you pumped Cam? Huh, are you ready? Woooo!” One of them screamed in my face.
I threw a half hearted laugh and replied, “Yeah man” then went to the shower area. It is a shower area but it had been converted a while ago to a sitting area. It has six or seven chairs, a table, a plastic cubby thing, and a couple wood benches. I can imagine those damn kids smuggling in those old, unwanted chairs, and where they found those goddam benches, who knows. Then they’d all high five, that killed me. It would be like one of those movie scenes where everyone lights up a celebratory cigar and revels in their masterpiece. In this case, their masterpiece was seven crumby chairs and a couple ancient benches jammed into a smelly room. Some of those guys went on to do great things with football. They really did. One guy went on to play on the Baltimore Ravens practice squad. One year he was offered a deal with the goddam New York Giants, but the goon turned it down. The next season those damn Giants went on to beat the Patriots in the Superbowl. Some guy from small town maine almost got himself a goddam Superbowl ring. I sat down in my chair and tried to simmer down from that ass screaming in my face. Stupid kid, he’s lucky I didn’t give him what for. I hate it when kids do that. I really do. I closed my eyes and breathed in the dank air of the locker room. The air was thick and smelled of eight weeks of sweat and dirt. It didn’t make my head cold any better either, that’s for sure. I put a shirt over my face to try to dull the goddam smell, but it was already stuck in my nose. You’re supposed to get used to smell after a while, but not this smell, every week added a new damn layer to get used to.
Finally someone walked to shower area. It was Cody another lineman on the team.
“How you doing, big guy?” he asked me. He always calls people “guy.” Sometimes “big guy,” “tough guy,” any variation really, he’s a hick like that. He has a full chin-strap beard unlike my clean face. I’ll admit, I can’t grow facial hair, just more peach fuzz, but his beard always looked a little unkept to me.
“I’m fine,” I lied. I wasn’t fine. I really wasn’t. I was nervous off my ass and my head was banging away.
“You ready for tonight?” he asked.
What a dopy question. As if a goddam third year letterman, who’s a captain of the team and the most experienced kid on the whole line wouldn’t be ready for a game. I looked back at him and said, “Oh shore,” in a thick accent to mimic his voice.
“Goddamit, Cam.” We both chuckled.
At that point a few other kids had come in and taken a seat. Luke, Nate, Matt, and Damon had made their way into the shower area. Matt was the starting running back on our team, the best damn athlete too. He really was. Strong as hell and get that kid in a pair of shoulder pads with field of green in from of him, no one was going to catch him, and I’m sure of that. I’d been on the team with him since the sixth grade. Not only that but somehow I always found myself being his lead blocker. I was probably connected with him more than anyone else on the damn team. When we were younger I remember blocking for Matt. There was one play where I blocked some dinky kid out. I always blocked out for Matt. He always seemed to run in, even when coach would tell the damn kid to run out, he’d run in. So I blocked out and sure enough, 60 yards later, Matt was in the end zone. That kid came trotting back to the huddle, celebrating with everyone and giving high fives. Then he looked me right in the goddam eye and said, “Cam, that was your touchdown.” He really meant it too. I don’t remember Matt ever saying much on the field except for that. I didn’t even know what to say to that except a surprised “thanks.” I can replay that moment over and over again. I’ll admit, there’s some kind of satisfaction I get when Matt scores. I mean scoring is great either way, but when Matt scores it feels like there’s seven years behind it.
Anyway, more people started to come into the shower area and get their gear on. Damon started to crank some kind of crappy music. The music these kids listen to is so crumby. I have to admit though, sometimes when those damn kids start to dance, I have to too. It’s good to loosen up before a game and relax your mind a bit.
More and more kids had their game pants and socks on so I followed suit. The guys started to settle from their dancing, and took seats in the shower area. If there was anything that could silence an aggressive football player is was the realization that his last homecoming game was in two damn hours. And even though no one ever said it, you sort of knew those two hours were going to be the fastest two hours of your life.
Coach came in and gathered us all in the front of the locker room. That damn smell seemed to lift a little, maybe it was just the open door. I liked coach, he had a way with words. I mean, I’ve said some pretty good speeches to the guys, but mine were all premeditated. Coach would come up in front of all of us and he would just spill, it’s almost like decades of football just fell out on to the goddam floor right in front of our feet. He was one of the only people in this damn school who knew how hard we had it. We tried to tell our case to other kids in the school, but kids who don’t know first hand to what you’re going through will always be ignorant to it. He knew it, and the team knew it. But no matter what the score was he was always there for us, he promised us that. And boy if he had anything it was his damn word.
Anyway he left after his speech and we retreated back to the shower area to get the rest of our gear on. Those goddam shoulder pads clicked and the metal tips on our cleats clacked on the tile as the guys made their way out of the locker room. I was the last one out. I took a deep breath, so deep it hurt my damn lungs. It really did. I breathed in all eight weeks of sweat and dirt, those damn celebrating kids, the ancient wooden benches, that kid who almost got the Superbowl ring, took it all with me and got the hell out of there.
Evaluation:
This is hands down my favorite essay I’ve ever written. Like I said in my intro letter, I finally got to write about football without it being a play-by-play or a cheesy “I didn’t win the game but here’s what I learned” reflection paper. I pulled out every image and memory I had from football and put it into this piece. One thing that made this piece very enjoyable to write was the fact that Holden is very easy to imitate. His dialect is very noticeable. To write this piece I basically put my story to the hymn of Holden. My strongest paragraph in this story is the third, where I talk about what it would’ve been like when the guys first but the chairs in the shower area. There was a good flow of crumby things, italics, and running off on tangents. It was also good because Holden reminisces a lot in Catcher in the Rye, so that worked well too. Football is very close and personal to me. This makes it easy to write about. I have noticed that throughout the year when I get to choose my topic I usually enjoy the essay more. This is because I can write about a topic I’m either interested in or can relate to somehow.
I feel that my use of imagery in the story was strong. Like when our coach would talk it was like “decades of football just fell out on to the goddam floor right in front of our feet.” As for organization since there wasn’t a thesis statement, I can’t say my topic sentences related back to my thesis. Whenever I went into a tangent story though, I came back to where I left off so I wasn’t jumping around. This essay was really a coming together of my 1st semester skills. It was organized, the story was in chronological order. I didn’t use my voice in the story because the assignment was to use Holden’s. Since he’s a teenager our style of talking is very similar which made it easy to write in. There were very few grammatical and spelling errors as well. I may be a little partial to the story because it’s my story about football, but I still enjoy it a lot.