This is responding to the 'What objects tell the story of your life?' I feel like I'm a little short on reflection, so it would be nice to know where readers would want more reflection.
The first time my frisbee got thrown up on top of Uni Gym, I was devastated. I was a subbie at the time, and one of the seniors had thrown a little too high and it got caught by the wind. The frisbee blew down off the roof about a week later, but not before I had gotten two new, identical frisbees from my dad and the senior that lost the original.
This frisbee has been through a great deal of abuse. It’s an Aerobie Superdisc. It’s been stepped on, slammed into sides of buildings, kicked, etc. It lived in my backpack for a couple of years. And most recently, it was on top of Uni Gym for around ten months.
The story with me and frisbees goes back to elementary school, where nobody wanted to include me in the PE sports, and they had a good reason. I was trash. But at some point, my dad and I started throwing around a frisbee for fun. At first, all I was trying to do was touch the flying disc. Later, around the start of middle school, I had gotten good enough to catch reliably, and throw pretty well too. Not that my classmates knew; I was still excluded for the most part. It was around this time that I got the frisbee mentioned above.
All of this exclusion changed when I started going to Uni. Nobody knew me or my story, so I could start fresh. When we got to the Ultimate Frisbee unit in PE, I got to see how I could do if I was included in the game. It took a while to figure out the specifics of playing in a group, since I hadn’t had the opportunity to do that at all. But I was also throwing around my frisbee with Will after school, and it didn’t take us long before we were lobbing it back and forth to each other across the entire Uni yard. For the first three years at Uni, I was building a reputation among some people as ‘that one guy who always has the frisbee.’
However, this reputation was among a very small number of people, so during Cross Country season, there was one day when I didn’t go to the morning run, but a bunch of the other guys did, and they played Ultimate Frisbee over by the Atkins tennis center. They also played again that afternoon, and I was with them that time. The best moment of that day happened just as we were about to head back. We were tied 2-2, and the next point would be the end and we would head back to Kenney. One of my teammates missed the catch in the endzone, and the opposing team was just starting to cheer that they hadn’t lost when I ran in behind and caught the frisbee about three inches from the ground. It was after this that the boy's cross country team started calling me Frisboi Cedrico.
My frisbee got thrown up on top of Uni Gym again at the end of Sophomore year, and just recently was recovered. It’s severely damaged. It's held together by the rubber ring. There was a plastic disc that used to be clear, but now is some opaque frosted color, and cracked. I've had the thing for around six years now, and I don't think it will fly again, but I'll keep it to remind myself of everything I've done with that frisbee.
I really like this post. The topic is clearly very personal and you convey that well. I do think some of the transitions between paragraphs could be smoother. As for where you could do more reflection, I think you could discuss more how you felt in PE pre-Uni. Frustrated? Unsure? Determined? idk.
ReplyDeleteI have noticed that frisbees are particularly important to you, but never knew the story behind it. I thought you did a really great job of conveying this story and in reading it, I felt like I got to know you a little bit better. I really liked your specific description of the disc at the end, and would have enjoyed seeing more description this detailed throughout.
ReplyDeleteI like how you made a really interesting essay out of something as simple as a frisbee. I feel like I was about to learn a lot about you, but if you want to add more reflection, you could add more about why you started liking frisbees in the first place.
ReplyDeleteI liked the way you really analyzed what went into making you a better frisbee played and how you had to adapt into team-play in PE. I feel most people just play without thinking about that stuff too much, so it's interesting you went in depth to that. As Hadley said, maybe you could've included and reflected on what made you like Ultimate so much as it seems you're quite into it.
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