Temper

I was a good kid in elementary school. I had been home-schooled from grades two to three, and then attended Crescent Park Elementary school for 4th and 5th grade. When I went to Crescent Park I was quite, nice, athletic, had many friends, and most importantly had all A’s. However the one thing that I did not accomplish at that school was the ability to control my temper. After only spending two short years at the school, I got into nearly 5 fights. Some of them I tend to brag about, others I am extremely disgusted by, but either way I could not control that rage. The red.

The first incident occurred in the fall of my 4th grade year. I was new at the school, but knew many of the kids because I played football with them. In a way, football was the main cause of most of my fights. Due to being part of the football team, that ended up going undefeated and winning a championship against powerhouse Rumford with only twelve players that year, I was in a clique of tightly knit football players. This clique did only one thing during recess, and that was playing two-hand touch football. I was fast, tough, competitive and so was everyone else. The nature of two-hand touch football relied heavily on the earnesty of the players to acknowledge whether they had been downed or not, and this produced problems. It seemed that nearly every single game ended in an argument about what down it was, the touchdown boundaries, or whether someone got the runner with two hands or one. One recess, we were arguing about what down it was, and this kid called me a motherf*cker. I walked right up to him and said,

“What did you call me?!”

“I said ‘motherf*cker’”

He said.

Then all of the sudden, I saw a flash of red, and the next thing I knew, I grabbed a hold of his collar and threw five quick and hard haymakers right on his head. The teacher came running through the field and broke us up. She walked me down to the principal’s office, but I was not that worried about that. What I was worried about, was the knuckle’s of my right hand. They hurt, but it gave me that feeling of being a tough dude. I ended up sitting in the principal’s office with my football teammate who now had an ice bag on his head. The principal asked what had happened and after a little explanation, my teammate said that it was his fault because he had provoked me. After this brief meeting, we both walked out with no punishment due to our clean track records.

As far as I was concerned at that time, we had just gotten even. However, after reflecting on the event years later, I realize that my actions were produced by a rage that plagued me throughout the next year and a half. In that period I had got into another four fights, some caused by football, and others by a water bottle to the eye that sparked a quick punch, resulting in a bloody-nose. It got so out of control that I was nearly suspended. Eventually I learned to control my anger and now as far as I can tell I am still that quiet, nice, kind of athletic, and all B’s and maybe an A student.