playing for the other team (bxb)

[prologue] when we were young

Even as a senior now, I can still distinctly recall the events of the first day of the first grade. Not only can I remember the events themselves but the feelings that followed as well. I can recall the feeling that filled my stomach as I walked to the bus stop for the first time, I remember how it felt trying to get to my class, I remember meeting my teacher, I remember the ice-breakers that they used in an attempt to get us to become acquainted with our new classmates, and I remember just about everything else.

But more than anything else, I can vividly remember every last detail of recess on that day.

I was nothing like my current self. In fact, I must've been the complete opposite of who I currently am. I was timid, shy, and perhaps the most socially awkward person in that entire class. My actions certainly weren't as brave as my brain wanted them to be during that time period. Over and over again, through the entire recess, I thought about how easy it would be to just go up to people during recess and talk to them. I was sitting down on this little red bench that was towards the monkey bars watching everyone else play. They were all so close to me and all I had to do was go up to them and say something. They were just kids, it couldn't have been that hard to just interact with them.

Yet for whatever reason, there was this little doubtful voice (a voice that I'm sure wasn't mine but was actually my mother's-who had repeated over and over again to me how I needed to be more outgoing so that I would make some friends on my first day) in the back of my head that made it seem so much more difficult than it was.

For about half of recess, I just sat there with my head full of thoughts on how I would approach people. I kept planning things out but the second that I had to rely on my own two feet to get up and walk over to people, it was like I was paralyzed.

So, after a while, I began to feel as though it was too far into recess to try to start talking to people. The timing just felt way too awkward and I had lost hope in the idea that I might make a friend on the first day of school. I told myself it was fine, though. There were still tons of days of school left in the school year and if I didn't make a friend on that day, there was still a lot of time left. Even though I was partially a little off-put and upset by it, I told myself that it would be fine.

And maybe it was that small ounce of acceptance that allowed the universe to bring a boy named Jamie Wright into my life-almost as some sort of gift for coming to terms with spending half of my day as a loner. I didn't realize at first, but Jamie had walked right up behind the bench that I was sitting down on and stood there for a moment or two before speaking up to say, "Hello," in his giggly child-like tone.

I can remember how much it caught me off guard. I was deep in thought at the time--or as deep in thought as a six-year-old can be--and the boy standing behind me had really frightened me for a second. I recollected myself quickly and looked back to the boy, replying, "Oh, uh, hi," as he walked around the bench and plopped down right beside me.

From the very start, it was clear that Jamie was different from me. He had this friendly demeanor to him even as a child. Eventually, I would grow up to become just as outgoing but it wasn't something that came naturally to me as a child. I'm not even sure that I would have become as outgoing as a teenager if it weren't for Jamie befriending me. Jamie's natural decisiveness was a quality that made him easy to like. He acted freely. If he wanted to go up to someone and befriend them, he would.

I also remember that Jamie must've been the first black person that I'd ever really met. Living in an incredibly small town in the middle of nowhere in the south meant that there really wasn't that much diversity where I lived. I'm sure that there might've been times that I had seen people of color out in public but I had never really met or properly interacted with a person who was. I hadn't said anything about it to Jamie but I remember making a small mental note of it.

I had seen racism before. In a town like this, racism was very much alive--even though people claimed that it wasn't. My mother and father had never said much about it to me as a child but I was old enough to partially understand what my uncle was referring to when he would say that there was a certain type of people that he didn't want in this town or other bigoted things that he certainly shouldn't have been saying to anyone, let alone someone who was six years old.

But meeting Jamie, I couldn't wrap my brain around how Uncle George wouldn't want Jamie in his town. Jamie was the only person talking to me--so he must've been nice--and I didn't think that the color of his skin could somehow make him less likable. I even thought that Jamie was rather good-looking and I recall being rather jealous of how he looked. He had this stunning curly hair that I envied greatly, seeing as though my hair was blonde, straight, and boring. I was attractive in a conventional way. If people thought that I was attractive, it was only because I looked just like everyone else in town. Jamie, on the other hand, was attractive as an individual. He was beautiful. Jamie stood out but not in a way where he made it seem like it mattered. He was something that was different in a town full of copy-and-paste white republicans.

"What're you doing all alone?" He asked.

"Oh, well, I don't know," I awkwardly replied, "I don't know anyone."

Jamie had put on this big grin as he smiled and said, "Well, I'm Jamie."

"Jamie," I had repeated, not in an attempt to get his attention but almost as a way of trying the name out, "Isn't that a girl's name?"

"It's a boy's name too. It's short for James... but James is my dad's name and I really like my dad so I don't want to steal his name."

"Then why don't you go by Jimmy or something less girly?"

"I like the name Jamie," He told me with full confidence, "What's your name?"

"It's Sam."

"Got some bad news for you, then," Jamie said, "Sam is a girl's name too."

Feeling rather flustered by the contradiction I had accidentally made, I made my best attempt to deny that they were the same thing. "Well, yes, but it's not girly. Jamie is a super girly name."

"If you say so," Jamie laughed, "You're funny," I wasn't trying to be, I had thought, "Do you wanna hang out with me and my friends?"

It didn't seem like there was much of a point to doing that since recess was nearly at its end but I thought it would've been a mistake to say no. I had told him yes, and with that, Jamie brought me over to the group of boys that he was hanging out with. They were the quote-on-quote popular kids and I'm absolutely positive that I wouldn't have had the courage to talk to them if it were just me. But Jamie had this way of making things seem so much easier than they actually were. At the time, he had an overwhelmingly positive attitude about things to the point where he could convince me to do anything, even the scariest things.

Jamie was bold in a town of the most boring people that I'd ever met, and for that reason, Jamie would grow to become not only my best friend but also the most important person in my life.

QOTD: What were your biggest fears growing up?