The Vortex of Life | Teen Ink

The Vortex of Life

November 13, 2015
By THEWALRUSMASTER BRONZE, Cupertino, California
THEWALRUSMASTER BRONZE, Cupertino, California
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

 It was a cool October afternoon, unusual weather for the state of California. I walked across the field right next the black top, and passed a few kids jumping in piles of golden leaves. I was tempted to go and join them, but had a schedule to keep. It was a Tuesday, and on Tuesdays, I had Judo practice. I briskly walked past, and was almost at the dugout where all the kids that go to after school programs meet up, when someone shouted my name.
    “JESUS!!!! WAIT UP JESUS!!!!”
I turned around to see a bespectacled asian kid running towards me. It was one of my friends, Enegue.
    “Whatup Enegue?” I said.
    “S’up,” he responded, as he pulled out his planner.
    “What's tonight’s homework?” He asked.
    “Let’s see…. We have page 666 to page 669 for Mrs. Pools’ class, we have a science test for Mr. Norbs’ class, no homework for Mr. Eneergs’ class, and the five-page history report on ‘how orange striped zebras relate to Muhammad’, for Miss Issiron’s class.”
    “Thanks Jesus. I can’t believe we have so much homework!”
    “Yah! Miss Isirron gives out so much homework, I bet we could make a piñata the size of Donald Trump’s ego with all the papers she gives out!”
He chuckled and said,
    “Yah, that's about right.”
    “Whelp, I have to go now bye!!!”
I replied, and hurried off to where my mom picked me up.
    At around 3:30, I got back to my cozy house. I felt like collapsing on my bed and going into an eternal sleep, and dream about unicorns and zebras being ruled over by walruses, but I had ‘some’ homework to get done. I went to the kitchen, where my mom was baking pumpkin spice cookies, and asked her to make me a ham sandwich. I started up my computer, and went on to finish up some homework.  But before I could start, I looked at my chat notifications, and my eyes nearly popped out of my sockets. There were 666 new messages from different people. I chatted with Aiphos and Enegue for around an hour for the first time. By the time I had answered all of them, it was already 4:00, and my friends came over and asked whether I could play football with them or not. I went outside, and scored five touchdowns, and went back home. Apparently, the saying, “time goes by fast when you’re having fun” is true, because when I got home, it was already 6:00, but it felt like I had only been away for no longer than 15 minutes. After that, I went to judo practice. I detested judo, but I went anyway. Every practice seemed to get slower and slower. We drilled a lot of our throws, and then we practiced our falls. After 3 hours of tedious throwing and drilling, I finally went home with a tired and hungry body, and a sweaty head. After that i only had around two hours for homework, and half of that was spent on japanese homework. This continued for a few weeks, until one fateful day.
    A few weeks later I had a nightmare of a day. Well, then again, pretty much everyday had been a nightmare for the past few weeks. I had a playing test in band. I got picked near the end, and I felt ready to drop bombs. But when I started, the tune wouldn’t come out. It sounded as if my trumpet had choked on a carrot.  Needless to say, I failed the playing test. After that, I went to math. I couldn't keep up with the lesson because the teacher was going way too fast, and ended up having to guess half the time on the sample problems. During history, I found out that I had bombed the recent test, and that there was yet another new project due in 3 days. This was inconvenient because i had to go to a funeral for my friends dad for two days, and on the third day I had a judo tournament. Judo tournaments usually took around five to eight hours, more than ¾ of that being waiting to be called to fight. During language arts, I was told that my essay I had worked tirelessly on barely got a B. I wasn’t even surprised all this had happened. I was just really really mad and annoyed. At that point of the day, I thought that nothing could get worse. But of course, the biggest tragedy had to happen during my favorite class of the day. Nothing could’ve prepared me for what had happened next. It was favorite time of the day. P.E was my favorite period because it was one of the things I was truly good at. It seemed to be in my family blood line. My dad did track and field, my grandma had been a really fast runner, and my sister is really fast, and she’s a bodybuilder. Anyways, we were at the field. Our class was on our track and field unit. We were doing hurdles, and it was my turn to run. There was a row of around 10 hurdles, and I had cleared seven, when something hit me in the head. Then, I blacked out. I vaguely remember a dream about an EMS truck crashed into my house. When I woke up, I found myself in a small white-walled room with a bed and a side table, and a huge panoramic window through where I could see other rooms identical to mine. My head felt muzzy, and my legs felt like tofu.  Next to me, I saw my mom, my dad, my sister, and a man in a white lab coat. He asked me,
    “Are you ok? That was quite a hit you took there!”
I couldn't answer. Everything seemed incoherent to me at the time. My head hurt, and the rest of my body felt numb. Apparently, the man was a physician at the E.R, and he told me that when I was running the hurdles, on the seventh hurdle, a student from another class had batted a baseball during their baseball game, and that baseball had hit me square in the head. I had to stay at the hospital for the rest of the night. Well, I had exactly nothing to do for the rest of the night. So I sat there trying to understand my problem. Everything was going wrong for me. I had social problems, I was barely managing my grades, and I was mentally distraught. Ever since I had started talking to Enegue and Aiphos, it seemed as if the whole world was collapsing on me, that I was a black hole being battered and beaten by fatigue, infinite amounts of homework stacked in massive towers of paper, distractions, and social problems. As the night grew later still, I lay in my bed thinking about all the things that had happened in the past few weeks. Then I thought of something. The reason all of this was happening was because of me, not my friends, not homework. And then I thought,
    “I can make it better by myself.”
And then I fell asleep relaxed and knowing that I was back in control.
A few days later, I got out of the hospital. I felt weird finally walking, after not walking for 3 days straight. It was six in the morning, and I could go to school, so my mom made me. School passed as slow as a snail stuck in tar. Math was a drag. We learned about things we had already learned, and I almost fell asleep. P.E was another tiring mile, testing my endurance. Language arts was tiring, and after that I had to drag my tired feet all the way to the meeting spot where my mom picked me up everyday. When I got home I unpacked my stuff and took my homework out. Next, I went to eat a savory ham sandwich with a cup of iced mocha to stay awake.  After that, I confidently started my homework, I got together with some friends and finished up all my homework. Then I went to judo practice for three hours. At nine I came back and went on twitch to enjoy a gaming stream. When I went to sleep at ten, I felt like I had finally accomplished something this year.



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