Childhood Memory

As a child I, like most little children, had a fear of older people. This goes along with not talking to strangers but I took it farther than just strangers. When I was 8, I was asked to be the bat boy of a collegiate baseball team. At first I was eager to jump at the opportunity. As time went on, my enthusiasm diminished because I realized that I would have to deal with older strangers without the assistance of my parents. For weeks I dreaded the first game because I was afraid of what the players would do to me. I had a plethora of false ideas about them that made the weeks leading up to that first game one of the hardest of my entire life. When I arrived at the first game I was shaking in my cleats. I had my baseball bag with me that contained all of my catchers gear. To my dismay, one player approached me only minutes after my arrival. He questioned me abut the size of my bag. After some contemplation, he emptied my bag and placed me in it. Scared of what was going to happen next, I sat in my zipped up bag. After a short trip around the locker room, I was let out into a room full of players falling out of their chairs with laughter. In that moment, I grew up. I realized that not all strangers were bad people. I grew out of my shyness and fear of people older than me all in one day the ballpark.