[tw: sch**l, swearing, d**th joke]
Picture this: it's sixth grade and it's field day and eleven year old me has to play stick tag. Stick tag, of course, being a variation of tag where everyone has a stick and if you tap a person with a stick they're eliminated.
Now, if there's one thing you've gotta know about me it's that I am the opposite of sporty. I can't run very fast because of asthma, I can't catch balls because I have no hand-eye coordination, I can't do anything. So I just kinda stood off to the side. Stood in the 'safe zones' that were part of the game whenever I could. And the amount of people got smaller and smaller, and they took away the safe zones because there was like five people left. But no one really tried to tag me because I was this shy nerd kid and clearly not a threat. And finally it's just me and this other guy left. We'll call him Kevin. And Kevin is one hell of a dude. Nearly six feet tall even though he's only in sixth grade, broad shoulders, looks like a football player. He wasn't a horrible person as far as sixth grade boys go, but he was -- and still is, tbh -- definitely intimidating.
And then there's me. Nowhere near five feet tall, a hundred pounds soaking wet, this shy, tiny shrimp of a kid. But I'm not backing down because I'm as competitive as hell. So me and this fucking monster of a dude are circling each other, sticks in hand, and my little brain is like okay. we've been reading fantasy books our whole life. what does the smaller person have that the bigger person doesn't? speed. And I'm waiting for him to strike so I can duck out of the way and stab that motherfucker when the teacher is like oooookay we're gonna call this a tie, probably because she was thinking oh fuck this tiny shrimp of a kid is about to get crushed. But eleven year old me was devastated. I had already pictured myself winning and taking a dramatic bow and having people chant my name -- I was a dramatic kid.
But anyways I just remembered this and I'm literally dying because it's so funny in retrospect