Flamethrower Jacob Chan, 11 I was almost 11 in the warm windy fall of the year 2019, when my baseball team, the Bulldogs, were playing in the little league semi-finals. But still, I couldn’t help but want to crawl under my bed, where I would be safe. I couldn’t even bear to glance at the opposing pitcher’s deep blue eyes. His fastball was so fast that if you rode on it around a highway, you would get fined for speeding. My team crammed in the dugout before the game started, each of us getting to know one another way more than we wanted to. I swear I smelled vomit on the jersey of one of my teammates. “Listen up, Bulldogs!” My coach Adam began to yell. “It’s the semi-finals—if we don’t win this, each of you owe me five laps around the field!” Everyone groaned. Everyone, with the exception of me, and a few other boys. Not that we wanted to run laps, mind you, but because we were staring at the five-foot-seven kid on top of the mound warming up. He was literally throwing fireballs into the catcher’s rusty old, well-patted, brown mitt, with the glove strings tightly knotted. For a second, I didn’t care about the 10 pound gold trophy sitting on the table behind the dugout that would be handed out to the winner. I just cared about not getting plunked in the face by a 70 mph fastball thrown by the 11-year-old Godzilla. Alright, alright, call me a scaredy cat, but let’s face it—you would be freaking out, too. The tap of Bowen Orberlie, one of my teammates, brought me back to reality. “Earth to Jacob!” he said into my ear. I shook, and glanced up at my coach who was throwing darts out of his eyes to every single one of my teammates. Glancing down at a torn up sheet of paper, he began to scream the starting lineup aloud, with little tiny molecules of spit coming out of his wide open mouth as he spoke. “Chan, leading off!” he yelled at the top of his lungs, so loud you would have thought he was my cousin after watching the New York Mets lose. I froze. To be honest, I should have been proud of my nearly .370 on base percentage that got me the role of batting leadoff in the semi-finals, but–I. Did. Not. Want. To. Face. This. Pitcher. The rest of the lineup was a blur. I couldn’t think straight. Trembling, I grabbed my Rawlings blue and silver bat and stepped outside the dugout. I began to take some dry swings, you know, the swings that coaches and parents always say will “help you get better.” I tried to time my swing perfectly so I wouldn’t get embarrassed too much. I looked up at the crowd; they were whooping and whistling. I overheard a dad with a Bulldogs sweatshirt on yelling comments like, “Dang, this kid throws hard!” I rolled my eyes nervously, and glanced up at the pitcher. I swear he smirked at me. I sighed, and tried to not make eye contact. I watched the umpire take off his blue and black mask and bend down to clean the plate off with his dusty old brush. “Play ball!!” he screamed. I jumped. I shook my head. There was no way I was going to hit this pitcher. “Let’s go Bulldogs!!” someone yelled from the crowd as I stepped into the box. I took a deep breath. Slowly, I turned my head that was in two different realities. One side wanted to run away screaming and forget about everything I had ever done to be on this team. The other side wanted to suck it up and try to be the hero. Anyway, I stared at the pitcher with my shaky, dark brown eyes, and he stared at me with his confident light blue ones. And oh my, if eyes could kill, I would be on the ground dead. I swallowed hard. I might’ve swallowed my gum that I was chewing since warmups, and I wouldn’t have realized. Heck, if green aliens with one eyeball took over the earth right then, I wouldn’t have noticed. “Time!” I yelled to the ump, even though it wasn’t even half a second after I stepped in the box. The umpire scrunched up his eyebrows like he was confused. I couldn’t blame him. The pitcher looked somewhat annoyed. I stepped back into the rectangle-shaped batters box after trying to calm myself down and taking some more swings. The pitcher shook off a pitch from the catcher. Again. Again. Again. And again. I’m willing to bet money that he was messing with me. He had a little smile while he shook off the pitches. Finally, he selected a pitch. Fast ball maybe? Curveball? Changeup? Maybe he had a splitter? My head was spinning in all different directions. His face looked furious as he threw it as hard as he could. Life seemed to be moving in slow motion and then fast and furious when the ball came out of the pitcher’s hand. The ball was already in the catcher’s mitt before I even began to swing. The loud thud of the ball landing in the catcher’s mitt made me jump. My eyes went wide. The crowd even sounded shocked. People were even making comparisons to him and Aroldis Chapman. I started to panic even more because if there was one thing I knew about Chapman, it’s that he had no control of the baseball. I might get plunked! I stepped out of the box and took a practice swing. My hand trembled so much that I almost let go of the bat. “Stay in there!” A dad from the stands yelled. I stepped into the box. The crowd was yelling, screaming, chanting, you name it. As the pitcher selected another pitch, I blocked out every sound in the ballpark. The cheers, the insults,
memoir
How Nationality Affects the Eyes, a personal narrative by Sue Park, 12
Sue Park, 12 (South Korea) How Nationality Affects the Eyes Sue Park, 12 I still remember the day my teacher introduced me to the project. It was a cloudy day in April 2019, and the whiteboard had consisted of three bloody-red words that frightened most of the children: North-Korean Interview. I did love projects and adventurous trips at that time, but I knew this trip would be different, and somewhat spectacular. I had planned the new unit, different countries and cultures, to be about the ‘normal’ countries, not the countries that were known for their militaries and strict dictatorships, like North Korea. To make matters worse, I had always thought negatively about North Korea and its citizens. From school and TV shows, I naturally had a lot of prejudice about the place as it was planted in my mind as a brutal and unstable country with violent people. Additionally, I grew up watching the immense tension between the two countries in practically every political or social issue. It was incredibly easy to find news articles about the unbelievable actions of the North-Korean government officials, primarily Kim Jong-Un. … I stood in the middle of the hallway, frightened. I took a deep, slow breath as I took a giant step through the whooshing crowd of children. I quickly scanned the group of kids next to me; they looked like 3rd-graders that were enjoying the trip. I was blankly staring at them for a while when I heard someone calling me. My homeroom teacher motioned me to come, then smiled at me. At first, I thought she was waving at the playful boy behind me, but as I stuttered, she came up to me and told me that it was my turn for the interview. At that moment, I screamed, inwardly, “I don’t want to do this!” As my teacher carefully held my wrist and took me to the man from North Korea, I did not practice my script but rather practiced the karate skills that I had learned in kindergarten, fearing sudden violence. When I finally reached the door to the interview room, which looked like a torture chamber, my teacher nudged me calmly. At that moment, my teacher appeared to be a frightful green monster pushing me to the town of hell. Recognizing my fate, I trudged to the chair and quietly sat on the corner of it, ready to leave at any moment. Surprisingly, the man didn’t look any different from a normal South Korean man. He had a warm smile and he did not wear the military clothes that I had pictured in my head. As I quickly scanned him and looked into his plain black eyes, there was an awkward silence. And it felt like a millennium. When I couldn’t stand the silence much longer, I blurted out my first question: “What is the main obstacle you have faced in South Korea?” and as he answered accordingly, my stomach rumbled with guilt and fear. The man calmly listed out the prejudices and perceptions South Koreans had of him, and how difficult it was for him to find a job due to the people neglecting him after listening to his North Korean accent. As he listed out these examples, my guilt increased more and more due to the fact that I could relate to all of them. As if he noticed my pain, he asked, “Is something wrong?” and I replied, “No, I’m fine!” But, I knew this was a lie. As the interview went on, and I watched others interact with him, it became clear that this North Korean man was a complete contradiction from the picture I had drawn in my head. He was completely different from the military that was portrayed on the news. He was amiable, friendly, and loved making new friends. He was not violent nor rude, but was careful with his actions and was very gentle toward all the students. He bowed respectively to any newcomer that agreed to take the interview and was more than welcoming to anyone that came across his way. I slowly started to realize that it might be an unkind mistake to overgeneralize North Koreans as the “antagonists.” I learned that without meeting them, we should not criticize a certain group of people just because of their nationality. This is because even though their nationality might have a rough background, their citizens might be different as they might not be influenced by these experiences. This is why the interview provided me with the lesson that we should not judge a person by their nationality. This experience definitely encouraged me to recognize problems related to prejudice in society that still exist today.
My Life in Corona Social Imposed Distancing: A Poem Memoir by Leah Mesuk, 12
My Life in Corona Social Imposed Distancing A Poem Memoir By Leah Mesuk, 12 Every day is a struggle to remember what is going on outside People dying others suffer Me, here, asking to go swim in a pool I feel selfish But also very lucky Struggles define the human race All of us Even you With mind disorders Physical disorders Problems at home With bullying at school We all have problems Even though at times Not visible with the human eye People may take out their problems on others Like the Chinese Hate Crimes Because it is said they started the Coronavirus That doesn’t make it right Let all of us join together to End this fight And win it right Leah Musak, 12 Manhattan, NY
