Football was one of my hobbies and still is, but at a point of my life it was taken away from me. But I didn’t let that stop me so I kept on proving myself that I could be known to other people rather than them just looking through me than at me.
Being popular was a big thing to everyone, especially me when I was a kid. I would had to choose the right people as friends that could take me places in life and make something of myself for a change. That kind of changed after I met a guy called Aminur. He was like an image of ‘Martin’ in the comic series ‘The Simpsons.’ Everyone would pick on him just because he was different, but inside I felt sorry for him and for some reason I never showed it when it mattered the most.
In class he would sit in front of me just minding his own business when my friends would bully him and call him names, but the thing I regret the most is that I joined them as they cussed and taunted him. Afterwards I would get this funny feeling inside of me, thinking only if I helped him. One day he walked passed me and my mates tripped him up and he dropped like a deer being shot at while running, for a second I thought to myself really hard about what would happen if I helped him and stood up for him? What would my mates say the next time I see them? Well if they were true mates they would listen and allow him and go pick on someone else, but what the heck I helped him said ‘jus allow it, its gone too far now, and if you don’t leave him ill sort you out myself,’ I guess that approach never helped me becoming popular but at least it gave me confidence. My ex friends ditched me the next day and gave me the silent treatment, but now I was stuck hanging round with Aminur for the rest of my high school years. After a few months I came to find out that my ‘new’ friend was no different than my old ones, he picked on everyone and was rude to teachers. He was a big mouth and that big mouth one day will get him in very big trouble. I wouldn’t personally call him a mate because he doesn’t appreciate people of who they are. I guess everyone is like that at a stage, I don’t blame him of being so rude because of all the grief, humiliation and rough times he has experienced in the past and he is right that he should stand up for himself, but he is wrong in the way he’s going about it. I guess whatever anyone says to change him would not affect him because no one can be forced to change jus like that, it takes time for them to realise of what they have done. You just have to let nature take its course.
I had my days of lust and my days of love, but the first ever girl I fell in love with was ‘Priya.’ It was the beginning of school, we just came back from our summer break. It was dreadful. I knew I wouldn’t be able to cope through it. Just when I entered the class I saw this incredible girl, she was beautiful, anyone would have thought her dad was a terrorist because she was ‘Da BOMB.’ She was good at everything, talking, getting to no people, but for some reason she wasn’t good at getting to no me? She would get A*’s for every subject, the teachers would pick her to do jobs jus so she can miss out on the hard stuff we learn about, they would even hold up her work out the front. She was gorgeous, if I was a dog she would be the bone, and if I was the rock she would be the waterfall running over me. I wasn’t really good at anything, I was just clumsy and a geek. There I was standing out the front with nowhere to sit. In the end I had to use my teacher’s (Miss Marquis) chair. She said ‘ you can sit there for the present.’ Everyone gazed at me. Priya was the only one who smiled, that made my cheeks light up. When the bell went I stayed in the seat, Ms Marquis said ‘what are you waiting for, Hiten?’ I said ‘I’m waiting for the present you said I was gonna get.’ Everyone packed up. They all laughed like mad, Except Priya. My face was burning, I can tell you that, talk about embarrassing. After that my problems just got bigger and bigger. They were picking on me, I couldn’t say a thing to stop them. I would have liked her to be my friend. But she was popular and I wasn’t. For the first time she sat beside me, I wanted to think that she sat next to me of her free will, but it was just that all the seats were taken. Her ponytail hanged down and swished across my books. I had this feeling in my stomach when I looked at her. The twinkle in her eyes made me weak and I hesitated to ask her on ‘how she was doing?’ luck struck when her elbow hit my arm and she said her first word to me and it happened to be ‘sorry’ from then on I started asking her questions about why she never talked to me, and she said ‘because the guys make the first moves,’ I came to a point where I told her I liked her, I don’t know how that came about, don’t ask! But she had a guy that she liked and was special to her, I didn’t want to say much because I already had made a fool of myself of saying I liked her when she never liked me. After that day she kept saying ‘Hi’ to me, it kind of became a daily routine.
I learned that without asking you don’t get. And you should always get to no the person before you go serious, otherwise you’ll have problems all round.
