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Chapter 3

A New Beginning

First day of the fourth grade was pretty simple and easy. I had already made some new friends, but the one new friend that stuck out to me was James. His name was James too, and we instantly became best friends. A culture difference that I already noticed, and it really confused me, was that James was collecting soda tabs, and he had an empty container labeled “Pop Tabs.” I was trying to figure out what he was meaning by that. “Pop” is a sound to me, and I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about. Eventually, I had just looked inside the container and was just puzzled at what I had saw in the jar. That is when I began to realize that people out in the Midwest had different names for common items. I would later pick up on what other names that people had for different things.

During the fourth grade, I was invited to a monster jam event through Boy Scouts. I could go for free, but I had to join the Scouts. I did that and had a great time with that, so I didn’t think twice about joining Boy Scouts. I never really cared for them, but it was a good way to make some new friends and learn new things that I may need later on in life. I would start going to youth group from my church to try and make new friends and have some fun doing church activities. I also did karate at Larry Davenport for a little over a year to make new friends and learn a little bit of self-defense if I ever needed to defend myself.

I played lots of sports back home, but I never played football, so I decided to play in the sixth grade. I started out as the right guard as an offensive lineman and started to enjoy it. One classmate and teammate, Nick, gave me the nickname “Lego man” because I had a duffel bag that was the shape of a Lego brick, because when I was a kid in Seabrook, I always played with Legos and loved anything to do with Legos, and from then on out, during middle school, my nickname for some people to me became Lego man.

I was usually a really quiet and to myself kid, so tacking other people and getting myself out there wasn’t the easiest thing for me to do. I continued to go to school and play football when it was in season. During the offseason for football, I was still doing karate and going to Boy Scouts once a week. I didn’t enjoy Boy Scouts, and I didn’t really like playing football. I was just kind of “going with the flow” to see if maybe I would find something that I would enjoy doing more.

I remember that one Friday night that my parents came out to watch me play and during this one particular play, the quarterback snapped the ball, and I don’t remember anything that happened after that. I was freaked out at first, and I didn’t want to say anything because I thought that it was just nothing and that I spaced out for a second. I had never spaced out when playing football, especially when it was during an actual game and not just practiced. My parents picked me up and said that as a family, we should stay and watch the high schoolers play football. I just kept telling them that I just wanted to go home, but my parents wanted me to stay and watch because they thought that I would have fun and enjoy myself. I ended up crying saying that I didn’t want to be there anymore because I was pretty sure that I blacked out on the field, and I didn’t enjoy playing anymore.