The Long Jump
The Long Jump (nonfiction essay - some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals) It’s mid-June, four months before Glenn will sing to me at my locker. Today is one of the final half-days of my freshmen year of high school. I have made it. A shaky start perhaps, but now sitting on the grass amongst the coolest kids of my class as we crack jokes while signing one another’s yearbooks, it’s clear my year was a success. It’s a perfect blue-skied early summer afternoon with just the slightest of breezes. Perfect t-shirt and shorts weather. The entire school sits on the visitors’ side of the football field. The upperclassmen are up in the bleachers and us lowly freshmen are on the grass—we don’t mind this separation today. All two thousand of us are on the foreign visitors’ side, as it is closer to the school. We were not made to cross the football field as someone official deemed that where we now were was a safe enough dista