Memoirs of an Outstanding* Teen

Chapter 11: The Bad Example

When I got to Grade 9, I must admit, my life was beginning to feel a little monotonic, a little boring. I wanted to do a little more than just study every single afternoon. So I decided to try out for a sport or some other extra-curricular. And since half of the girls and my school played netball, I decided 2011 would be the year that I also joined a netball team.

Did I have selective amnesia for that grade-8 athletics meeting? I don't know, but apparently, I thought I actually had the coordination to catch fast moving balls, to make sudden stops, and to understand what game strategy my teammates were following. I decided to get myself some shorts and some sneakers and go to that under-15s' netball trial.

I had never even properly watched a netball match at that point. I didn't know any of the other rules besides catch the ball and pass it to someone else. So, I was up there running with the ball while, you're supposed to stop as soon as you catch the ball and pass it on within three seconds. I was bouncing the ball on the ground while you're not even supposed to shift your hands after catching it. I was crossing over lines, I was standing in the wrong blocks, I was trying to shoot while I was not the goal attack or goal shooter. I must have gotten whistled off at least seven times. But even after all those charades, they didn't tell me to go home, sit in a corner and think about what I had done. They apparently still decided to place me in a netball team.

Another thing that I apparently forgot was that there was no one to drop me off at practice in the afternoon or come pick me up afterwards. When my practice started, my father would be at work with the only car we had. So, what this meant is that I would have to take a taxi to practice, and wait until after 5:00 p.m. for my dad to come pick me up. And if you know anything about taxi systems anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa, you know that they're extremely unreliable. If you're running on a tight schedule, you should just be prepared to have your schedule do some Cirque du Soleil and be magically twisted to freaky positions. As you would expect, I was late for most of those practice sessions.

On one particular practice session, in rushing to cap it at 15 minutes late for the practice, I forgot one very important task: To put cream on my knees. If you're not a melanin saturated, God bless you, you'll never have this problem in your life, but for someone like me, that was a major mistake. Not putting cream on my knees meant that they looked like I had just kneeled in ash (hopefully not anyone's grandmother). As soon as I walked into the netball court, Riana (who was also on my team, a fantastic netball player might I add) looked straight at my knees, and she immediately got that look that you have when you feel proper embarrassed for someone. I looked down at my knees. Shoot! Now not only was I frazzled because I was late, but I was also worried that everybody would be staring at my knees and thinking of how sloppy I am.

I was already a terrible player, the weakest link in the whole team, but that afternoon, I was particularly bad. I dropped balls, I didn't stick my landings, and there was even a time when I was facing away from the ball and blocking my own team member instead of blocking my opponent. To someone who didn't know the level of horrible I could descend to, it would have looked like I was just intentionally trying to be horrible.

When the session ended, some girls were still practising their shots on the court, and I had time to kill before my dad got there, so I also stayed behind at the court and watched them. A few minutes in, one of them accidentally missed the ball and let it hit the ground. Then her friend laughed and said, "Ha-ha you just caught the ball like Nelu."

I had heard them chuckling all through practice. I had seen them avoiding me as the passed the ball around. But still, that comment was a needle through my heart.