Stormz on the Horizon

You Son of a Bitch

Jabari

When mama "bestowed" upon me a student coach position, I've been as swamped as ever.

I'm glad I chose not to do a fall semester with the dance company because I would've been spent to hell tryna play ball, coach these girls, and stay on top of school. Mama said she wasn't paying no tuition either, but she wouldn't have to if she tenured through the first half of the school year. She won't do that cuz guess what? It's too much. Same as me, I knew if I was gonna do all this I had to make some sacrifices.

I immediately dropped out of AP government cuz I knew good and goddamn well I wasn't gonna be able to do all that reading with my already heavy workload. Normally, I'm really studious, but I know me, I'll implode if I'm overwhelmed. I think my other classes will be alright to manage. If I'm struggling a bit it's fine, I've been known to be as charming to teachers as I am a disaster. I know they don't get paid enough, but I can't help I have a rebellious soul. They asses always end up liking me by the end of the year anyway.

Balancing being apart of both of these teams has been a task.

On one end I have to deal with my ongoing servitude to Damien and Quentin. As if they don't suck enough fun out of the sport I would call a livelihood, their antics are relentless. I promise I'm not exaggerating when I say, me and the other rookies do live like little woodland animals, constantly ducking and dodging big predators in the forest. It's been a never ending nightmare since the beginning of summer and I am so sick. The other boys had never been used to something so extreme. Imagine moving on to a high school football team from middle school, then being beaten black and blue for addressing upperclassman by their first name. That'd fuck you up wouldn't it?

Now, me, I was used to similar antics growing up, they were definitely more mild though. Today, I do have trouble highlighting which ones showcased the most micro-aggression. I would be about the same level of pitiful innocence as my classmates, but thanks to Quentin, I'm a little more progressed.

It's definitely why he seems to work harder to make me more miserable than other newbies. They try to call me his favorite, but I shut that down from the jump. Quentin has a completely different definition of favoritism, it's loaded with ignorance and selfishness. His actions have aligned with that definition since we were really small. Freshmen wonder why I'm the one with the most lip, but they shouldn't cuz it continues to keep me in bad graces with him. The number of occasions that Q has made me rue existence is the reasoning behind why I defy him so much. Damien just looks at me like I'm a disappointment each time I do. He looks at everyone like that so, whatever.

On the other hand I'm having to gather these little girls every other out of the week.
Well, they're not so little, bout forty-percent of the team are practically young women. But boy do they act the complete opposite! What they fail to realize is that I'm only fourteen, though I am their coach. But being a coach has come with extra responsibilities that I do not care for at all. At this point I'm a counselor, therapist, mediator, you name it. My mama gave me this lil minor position strictly because I've contributed so much choreography behind the scenes, now that I'm actually there she said why not. I leapt at the opportunity because it would give me a chance to stay close to my first love, dance. It was also good that I would still be active in it, while playing football.

When I was younger, that was far from easy. I went through a period where dance was all I could bring myself to think about. I was obsessed with it, how could I not be? Mama taught it religiously, my earliest memories are sitting in her studio while she trained her students. I knew from the jump I wanted to be them and have the talent they had. Not to mention, an older brother and sister in the class might've been what fascinated so much in the first place. Everywhere they went in the house, they were always moving, dancing while they ate, like most black people, bouncing to some commercial, flipping around in the den. There came my lil behind trying to copy and do what they were doing.