Your Crowning Moments of Awesome!

[Jade Harley]

So, this one time I was the last person standing in a game of dodgeball! It was in middle school. I was this tiny little girl with curls that spiders and other crawly things would get tangled in all the time, we weren't given a choice of whether to play or not, and I had zero hand-eye coordination.

We played on the basketball court, each team's territory divided straight down the center. It was possible for one team to chase the other down to the end of the court, until they were pinned to the wall behind the basket. The line that marked where a basketball player would normally be out of bounds could not be crossed by the opposing team, so they would be forced to just randomly throw dodgeballs at the cornered team until they were all eliminated.

The gymnasium wall behind us was concrete; it hurt to be hit in the face with one of the balls, as there were no restrictions on where you could throw 'em. The other team was vicious... kids are bloodthirsty in this kind of game. It was a recipe for my doom.

But, I hid behind everyone on my team, basically using a bunch of other small humans as meat shields until I was the only child left. I huddled up against the concrete wall under my team's basket, listening to my peers screaming and chattering from the folding bleachers. There were three kids left on the other side, hurling dodgeballs at me with some serious lethality.

I dodged every ball. It was awesome, like I was in the freaking Matrix, jumping to the side and shifting my legs or arms by a hair's length to avoid being taken out of the game. And, as the balls would richochet off from the wall with a smack, I'd snatch them out of the air and whip them toward my opponents in a blur of cheery rainbow colors.

I singlehandedly defeated the other three kids and left a few bruises, was heralded as a goddamn hero for a few weeks, and then everyone promptly forgot. But I never have.