Читать книгу Act of One - Victoria Inc. Barna - Страница 10

“Man, I can’t win. Everything’s so hard and I have to fight for every inch of progress. My whole life’s changed and nothing’s the same. I feel like a fish out of water and on top of everything else I don’t fit in anywhere,” thought Bruce. “I’m not ready to give up!”

Bruce had a vision of what he wanted to do but he didn’t know how to do it! Even his parents didn’t support him. His friends thought he was weird and had totally lost it. He was definitely a different person since he broke his leg and couldn’t play football. Sometimes they looked at him as if he came from another planet!

Bruce’s injuries were healing and he was off of his crutches and in a walking cast. He was sitting in homeroom class when his teacher came over and said, “Bruce, your Coach wants to see you in his office after school.”

“Thanks,” Bruce responded.

After school Bruce headed over to the Coach’s office walking through the team locker room to get there. All of the players were suiting up for practice. Bruce felt a lot of mixed emotions coming from his friends and teammates. Some were really glad to see him but others made cutting comments: “Hey, man, look who’s here! Yeah, it’s the biggest, no, the largest nerd in school. Sure nice to see you, Einstein.”

Bruce continued walking to the Coach’s office and tried to ignore the comments. He didn’t want to get into any hassles.

When he reached the office and walked in the Coach got right to the point and said, “Where have you been? Why aren’t you out on the practice field anymore? You know you are letting your teammates down! You know that, don’t you?”

“No, I’m not, Coach,” responded a surprised Bruce.

“Yes, you are, and I’m the one saying you are, Tully!” yelled a heated Coach.

“No, I’m not,” replied Bruce emphatically. “What I’m trying to do for my team is a lot more important than standing around on the sidelines every day, Coach!”

Coach didn’t want to hear what he considered were excuses so he said, “That’s it! You’re done! Get out of here. You can kiss your letter for this year ‘good-bye.’”

Bruce stopped and turned around. He looked his Coach squarely in the eyes and said, “Do what you have to do, Coach. I know I will.”

He left his Coach standing there and made his way back through the locker room. He wasn’t in any mood to talk to anyone. He was upset and angry and thought to himself, “Who is that guy? I’ve been loyal and I have given this team everything I’ve got. Doesn’t he understand I have something better to do than stand out there on the sidelines? How can he take away a letter that I have more than earned? I don’t get it!”

Before he could get out of the locker room he was stopped by DeAngelo, the running back. “Hey, what did Coach say?” DeAngelo asked.

“He said I’m out, done, and I won’t get any varsity letter this year,” replied Bruce feeling angry and disillusioned.

“Wow! Really?” asked DeAngelo.

“Yeah, really,” growled Bruce.

DeAngelo decided to justify the Coach’s position and asked, “Well, where have you been anyway? Everyone on the team says you’ve lost it since you broke your leg.”

Bruce ignored his question and said, “Tommy, do you like milk?”

“What? What kind of answer is that?” asked DeAngelo.

“Just answer my question,” responded Bruce.

“No, I don’t like milk,” DeAngelo answered.

“Have you ever tasted it?” asked Bruce.

“No, I just don’t like it,” DeAngelo replied.

Bruce continued to push DeAngelo and said, “That’s my point, Tommy. That’s just stupid. How do you know that you don’t like milk if you’ve never tasted it before? Do you want to be an engineer or a scientist?”

DeAngelo was getting angrier and fed up with Bruce’s seemingly meaningless questions and responded, “No! Just leave me alone. Stop asking such stupid questions.”

By this time Bruce and DeAngelo were almost nose to nose, each one pressing the other. Bruce yelled, “Well, maybe you should be! You sure spend enough time at your uncles’ stupid garage working on your stupid car engine.”

DeAngelo had reached his breaking point and shoved Bruce hard. “Shut up!” he yelled.

Bruce, looking for a fight by this time, pushed him back harder and yelled, “No, you shut up!”

They were shoving and pushing each other, getting more and more physical the way things get resolved in New Jersey. The other players just watched and stayed out of it.

Charlie, Bruce’s best friend and a hard-nosed tough guy, listened to the whole thing while he suited up for practice. Finally he had had enough. He stepped in, not wanting anyone to get hurt, and demanded, “No, you both shut up!”

Charlie’s intervention surprised both Bruce and DeAngelo. No one messed with Charlie. So, DeAngelo pushed away, put on his helmet and stormed out of the locker room.

Charlie corralled Bruce and walked with him out of the locker room. He turned to Bruce and said, “Man, you’ve sure changed since your injury. All this stuff with the nerds is different. You’re always in study hall or the library now. We never see you anymore. My cousin said she saw you over at Drew University in the library last week. What’s up with that?”

Bruce responded, “Yeah, I fooled them into thinking I was a student there. They gave me a study carrel and a library card. I’ve got my own little room to work in now. They usually only give them to seniors. I sweet-talked a cute student assistant into giving me one. She thinks I’m in college.”

“Well, you’re big enough and smart enough to be in college,” responded a laughing Charlie.

Bruce began to laugh too, enjoying Charlie’s comment. “What’s this stuff all about anyway?” Charlie asked.

Bruce thought for a moment and searched for the right words trying to explain: “I’ll let you know, man, when I figure it all out myself. You had better get to practice or you will be running laps. I don’t want that happening on my account. Thanks, Charlie.”

Charlie gave Bruce a nod of assurance and hustled out of the locker room and headed for the practice field.

As Charlie left Bruce continued to think about what had happened with the Coach. “He still expects me to stand on the sidelines at every practice in spite of my injury. I’ve always supported Coach and the team. I’ve been loyal, but I guess it’s not enough. Coach thinks I’m betraying him and the team. What a crock! This is so unfair!”

He was disappointed, disillusioned and felt betrayed by his Coach and some of his teammates. Bruce began to harden his feelings: “I guess I’m still all alone in this. DeAngelo is Coach’s favorite and he’s the guy I covered for when I broke my leg. Man, I refuse to let this get me down. I know I’m not worthless. I’ll show them what’s more important than standing on the sidelines of a football field.”

He had a vision and a mission. Something burned within him. He had a feeling that kept urging him to take the next step, whatever it was. He knew he had to keep moving forward. Some people describe this as a gut feeling or intuition. Bruce didn’t know why. He just knew he had to keep going, one step at a time. He still wasn’t clear about what he was going to do or how he was going to do it.

He continued to research his adversary, the Soviet Union. He also wanted to know what the “nerds” at school felt about their futures. He asked some of them: “What do you want to do after high school? How do you plan to get it done?”

At first they were leery of Bruce and didn’t trust him. He had never shown any interest in them before. Bruce discovered that these kids were clear and motivated. They made a big impression on him.

One of the kids admitted, “I want to be a nuclear physicist and, if I could have one wish, it would be to talk to Dr. Edward Teller, the father of the H-bomb. That’s my dream.”

Someone else told Bruce, “I want to speak with Dr. Wernher von Braun, the German rocket scientist who is leading the emerging U.S. space program. I know this will never happen.”

These kids’ dreams made a great impact on Bruce and an idea began to form. It still wasn’t fully clear but he felt he was getting closer. The feeling deep within him kept urging him onward.

During his research he realized that other countries were far more committed to space and science programs for students than the U.S. He found that Germany offered a two-week-long science fair where students and top scientists interacted with one another. “This is great and a step in the right direction,” he thought to himself. “The United States of America is the greatest free country in the world and we don’t have any programs like this! We aren’t even close. The Soviets ARE winning and Khrushchev was RIGHT!”

He kept asking himself, “How can I make a difference? I’m just one sixteen-year-old high school student, a kid. What can I do?”

He felt at a standstill. “Where do I begin?”

All of a sudden he knew how to approach the problem. Like most kids his age he watched TV and enjoyed detective shows. So he imagined he was a detective and looked at the basic yet looming question again. He asked himself, “Why does Khrushchev think that his kids are better than us? What are they doing that we aren’t?”

He kept running this question through his mind over and over again until his head was spinning. It was a beginning and it helped him focus his research. He had moments of doubt along the way, however, and he continued to wonder and ask himself, “How am I going to pull this off?”

One thing remained clear to him through all of his self-doubt. The vision and mission of his research never changed. He was determined to discover if Russian kids were better than American kids.

Bruce was physically healed and he sat in his new favorite place, Drew University library, his own private room. His mind wandered as he thought about spring. He couldn’t believe how much research information he had collected and wondered how he was going to make sense of it. “How does all of this fit into my mission?” he asked himself.

It was while he sat there brainstorming that ideas began to crystallize for him. He realized that Russia and the United States were governed in totally different ways. He began to see that because of this difference most Russian kids didn’t have choices or a voice in their futures. The State decided who went to school and what schools they attended. In the U.S. everyone could decide their own futures and make their own choices.

He started to compare the two countries even more and realized that Russia was highly structured and organized. They had a selection process. Kids were focused in areas where they were perceived to have talent and strength. Once this was identified the kids received the appropriate training and education. Kids were put into immersion programs and usually they didn’t have a choice or a voice. They did what they were told.

United States kids, on the other hand, have lots of choices and can make them freely. Bruce recognized that in order for a kid in the U.S. to specialize or to be interested in science or technology some way to capture that kid’s interest had to develop. In some ways it appeared that U.S. kids looked for immediate gratification and lost interest easily.

Bruce continued to sort out and organize his thoughts and the information he remembered from his conversations with the school “nerds.” These kids, although interested and motivated, felt hopeless. They didn’t see any way to accomplish their dreams and to meet key scientists and innovators. They were left to their own devices to discover ways to get the training, support and education that would help them live their life dreams. Bruce thought to himself, “It seems as if freedom is working against us.”

His imagination began to take over and he became obsessed with finishing his project. He recalled the times that he went to New York with his parents and had visited the Hayden Planetarium and the American Museum of Natural History. These visits began to fuel the mental pictures that were forming in his mind.

He went to the front desk at the library and asked his friend, “May I borrow a typewriter?”

Bruce felt he was ready to get all of the thoughts and ideas out of his head. It was time to write down a solution for what he saw as the problem. The United States was behind in the space race and American students were not competitive in the areas of science and technology. The Soviet Union was currently leading in both the space race and in student development for the studies of science and technology. Where to begin?