Getting Older

Many people resist turning 30 years old. I got stuck in 6th grade.

I have always been pretty tall, and in 6th grade I was six feet tall (6’3” by 8th grade). I remember being in my bedroom after the championship game of our B-Team basketball tournament and just crying my eyes out. I wasn’t upset about the tournament results - we had won the championship, and I had been the leading scorer. It was the fact that I was getting older; I would never play in a B-Team basketball game again. 7th and 8th grade students weren’t allowed to play on the B-Team, so now I would be stuck playing with all the older students, and I was not as good as them. I’m not exactly sure what shook me so much during this moment in time, but I remember sobbing and feeling very alone in that moment. In fact, it was the loneliness that helped me move forward.

I remember thinking that it was not fair that I would have to get older and not play against teams where I could easily get rebounds and score without jumping. The thought that moved me forward was thinking that my friend, Lee, would also be stuck in seventh grade next year. Even the girls, Jill and Tammy, would no longer be sixth-grade students playing on B-Team basketball teams. Realizing that we would all have to go through this together, I pulled the back of my forearm across my eyes and headed downstairs to rejoin my family and move forward in life.

It is a strange memory, but one that has helped me through hard times beyond leaving sixth grade. It is one of the stories that has shaped me. What are the stories that have shaped you?