The Day I Stuffed John Fitzgerald.

The are many things that happened in the 5th grade. There are funny moments, sad moments, joyful moments and many more. But there is one momentous event that happened in fifth year of real education (not including kindergarten). That day is still known to me as "The Day I Stuffed John Fitzgerald."

Now in fifth grade, there always seemed to be a big change between boys and girls... and I'm not talking about that change. I'm talking about height. The girls are wicked tall! The boys are super small compared to them. During recess, I think if the girls played basketball, they would have a huge height advantage.Whenever there is the lineup after recess, the girls would tower over the guys. So strange.

Anyways, so imagine the boys' heights that I was in. Having the Asian genes, I was obviously one of the shortest kids. Also because I lacked any coordination with dribbling and shooting, I was usually the last kid picked for basketball. It was pretty ridiculous how bad I was.

There was this one kid called John Fitzgerald. His name is so epic in my history that I have to call him by his full name. He wasn't exactly the tallest nor was he the smallest. But I have to admit, he was a pretty good point guard in those times. Good ball handling, passing and setting up the shot. He was a pretty good shooter too. Where as for me, if someone came at me with the ball, I would back off. Timid me. Timid me. In fact, during the time I was playing basketball for my middle school team, I never had a foul. And this is not in a good way either. I was very non-aggressive in a aggressive game.

So it was just another day at recess with the normal game of basketball. One of the teams had John Fitzgerald and the other team had me. I think it was an intensely close game and the other team had the ball. It was almost time to go back in as we saw the teacher begin to reach for The Bell. Maybe I'll talk about The Bell in a later post.

We normally play a man-to-man defense where I would guard a person who was of similar height and who wasn't very good. Picks were set and there was a lot of ball movement. That was when I all of sudden saw John Fitzgerald was my covering man. My eyes widened when I realized this. "OHHH MANN!!" I could sense that something bad was going to happen. When he was passed the ball and realized who was guarding him, he made a run to the basket. "OHHH CRAPP!" We would definitely lose if he made the basket and it would let my whole team down. But if I try to go against him, I would get creamed! As I was thinking of this, he was charging in.

Think! Think! Think! Should I even try to do it? What harm could it bring? I really had nothing to lose. So I decided to jump and try to block his shot. He was near the hoop already. He leaped into the air towards the basket and so did I. He soared through the air, so much higher that I did.

I reached out my hand in effort to try to reach for the ball as I squinted. I swatted at the air, but then I felt a plastic-rubbery feeling. It was the ball?! I smacked the ball away out of his hands!

As we came down after the jump, I was confused. What?! Really? The whole team was in shock. My team cheered and The Bell rang. Recess was over and more importantly, we won the game. I was pumped. I had just stuffed a taller player for the first time in my life and I prevented our team from losing. It was a good day for the rest of the day. To this day, I still don't know how I was able to reach the ball and swat it away. But still, that day will forever been known to me as "The Day I Stuffed John Fitzgerald."


John Fitzgerald was still a really good player after that and a good sport. He helped out our middle school team with his skills as a point and shooting guard.


And I like MS Paint =)