Dumpster Diving

To all of those who have served, thank you. Happy Veterans Day.

For some reason when I was younger I always preferred playing sports with guys than playing with girls. I wasn’t good at sports but I figured it was better than sitting in the grass and talking. It also helped that I was always really tall for my age. When I was in first grade I was signed up for a city soccer league. There were two choices: play on a girl’s team or play on a co-ed team. I wanted to play with the boys as well so my parents signed me up for co-ed. I was the only girl on my team and I actually don’t remember there being any girls on any of the other teams. However, I was really young so don’t remember too well. My mom didn’t mind since we knew many of the boys on my team and we even knew the coach beforehand.

When I was in the satellite program the guys played football. I had no idea how to play but I liked it and I would just do what everyone else told me. I guess they didn’t mind having me around because, as I said earlier, I was taller than the rest of them.

In Jr. High I played basketball during lunch. There were a lot of girls who watched but I was the only one that played regularly. I think the big reason they let me play was because my friend and I were the ones who started it and we normally brought the ball. I wasn’t bad at shooting but I wasn’t very good at actually playing. I just had fun.

One day I brought my little brother’s basketball so we could play and as we played a new group of kids came. It was fine until they started playing keep away and I couldn’t get the ball. When the bell rang they threw it into the dumpster before they walked off. I knew I had to get the ball back since I had borrowed it from my brother and so when no one else would help me, I set my can of lemonade on the ground and jumped into the dumpster. Luckily everything was bagged. I quickly threw the ball out to a friend that had stayed to make sure that I was okay. As I was trying to get out something shoved me into the lip of the dumpster and I felt a liquid running down my hair. One of the guys thought it would be funny to close the lid on me and when that didn’t work they poured my lemonade on my head. I was thoroughly embarrassed, I had ripped my pants and my hair was a mess. I still don’t know why but I didn’t go home instead I went to my three other classes of the day. Odd really.

I won’t say that I am scarred in fact it is a funny story I use when I have to tell people about me.
“Yeah I went dumpster diving in Jr. High and blah, blah, blah.”

I think it is funny that two years after that someone recognized me as the girl in the dumpster. I was more famous than I thought.