What Friends Are For

During my freshman year at Oak Hill High School, I decided to continue playing the sport that I have been playing for a long time, which happened to be soccer. Being my freshman year, making it my first year of high school, I was incredibly nervous to start not only school but soccer as well. I was worried about what was going to happen when I got to the field for our first soccer practice and who was going to be there. I was worried about this because I did not know any upperclassman at all and did not know what to expect. Of course, just like any team, we all got to know each other and it seemed like a ridiculous thing to be nervous about. As the soccer season progressed, my friends and I would stay after school before our practiced started at 4:15. We would always go to the library until we got kicked out at 3:00, and then go out on the field early to mess around with the ball. It was just a regular and normal day, just like every other one. We went to the library for an hour, and then went to the field, except this time the girls team had a game, so we moved to the softball field. I decided to hop in net and be the goalie while everyone else would shoot the ball. While in net, I would always punch the ball away instead of attempting to catch it because I did not have any goalie gloves. While I was doing this, one of my friends shooting told me to trying stopping one with the palm of my hand. So I did. I decided to attempt to stop the ball with the palm of my hand when one of the strongest kickers on our team had just launched the ball at me. When the ball made contact with my hand, I knew right away that something was wrong. I could barely feel my wrist, let alone try and move it. The ball had hit the upper part of my hand and the lower part of my fingers, bending my hand and wrist back really fast and hard. Instead of telling our coach what had happened to my wrist, I decided to just practice and ignore the pain. And through that entire practice, every bump, touch and vibration brought me excruciating pain. Later that night when I got home from, I told my mom what had happen, and that I could barely move my wrist. She decided that I should probably go to the hospital and get it checked out. I do not know what I was expecting when I got there, but I did not think that my wrist was broken, I thought that I might have just pulled a muscle or tendon or something, but nothing broken. So of course I was pretty surprised when they told me that it was in fact broken, and that I would be needing to get a cast. Getting the cast was the easy part, but trying to do my work and moving and carrying items that would be the hard part. This is where my friends came in and helped me out. A big thing they did to help me out was that they would help me carry my stuff to my classes. During my freshman year, wearing our bags in the hallways were not allowed, so we had to carry our stuff everywhere, which is why that was such a big help for me. During that time that I had my cast on, we were assigned a writing assignment for health class. This was nearly impossible for me to complete with my cast on which was on my right hand. And I am a right handed person. So because of this, I obviously needed help with being able to finish that assignment. My friends helped me with this a little bit, but in reality it was actually my mom who helped me with this one. While I told her what I wanted to say, she would write down all the words that I was saying. As mentioned earlier, it was hard for me to carry around stuff that needed to be carried with more than one hand. Because of this, my friends would help me with my lunch tray whenever I got lunch from the school. I am thankful for the help of my friends when I needed it and appreciate their actions.

A time that I had helped my friend was when I brought my friend back to his house after our soccer practice almost every day. Me and my friend became close because of soccer during our freshman year and have stayed close friends ever since. Throughout the years, we continued to play soccer together, but eventually his parents kept getting busy and would not be able to pick him up some days. Eventually, I had gotten my license and was able to help him out. I voluntarily decided that I would be able to bring him home whenever he needed a ride from me after our practice and games. I did not mind doing this because he was a close friend and had helped me out in the past before. He also did not live far or out of the way of where I was going either, so it all worked out. I would also help this same friend out when we both had LRTC on the same days. When we have LRTC on Wednesdays, we still have to be at Oak Hill High School at the same time as every other day, which is by 7:30. Late start days do not affect us when we have that class so we still need to arrive early. Because of this, his parents were not able to bring him because they were not home. So because of this, I would bring him to the high school on those days whenever we had it, which was every other week. If I were not able to do bring him to our school early to get to our class, he probably would not have been able to take the class at all.

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