Jeremy and the Jump

 

The last two jumps of the contest are happening after lunch. I am what you would call the underdog, to put it mildly.

“Okay, you have thirty minutes for recess. Have fun and be safe. I’ll be sitting under the tree, as usual.”

Miss Allen opens the door. Jeremy runs from his chair and is the first one outside.
I am not as easily excitable as Jeremy. I am in no rush. I take one last swig of milk, tighten the cap, and place it neatly back in my lunch box. I take my napkin out, wipe bits of milk off my upper lip, and carefully place it in my lunch box. I snap the lid.

I take off my glasses and place them on my desk. I unbuckle my watch and place it next to my glasses. My slow and deliberate movements are meant to annoy Jeremy, who is waiting at the door. It works.

“Hurry up. What are you, chicken?” Jeremy yells from the door. He’s lucky Miss Allen is already outside.

We have thirty minutes, the jumps will take maybe five. Relax. I don’t say this out loud. I've found it’s better to say nothing. Jeremy would have some boorish come-back. The other kids would laugh, even if it wasn't funny. I find silence to be much more effective in expressing my true feelings.

I take my time as I walk onto the playground. I’m the last best hope for our second grade class, much to the dismay my classmates. I'm not exactly well coordinated, but Jeremy has already beaten everyone else. And, he’s done so in grand fashion, with much gloating.

What my classmates don’t know is that I've been practicing. I begged my father to take me to the city park, a request that was quite a surprise to him. At the park, he gave me pointers for achieving maximum height and velocity. I spent a full hour practicing my jumps.

Jeremy is already standing by the swings. He is bobbing his head back and forth, this is his preferred maneuver for taunting. If he were to put his hands on his hips, he'd look like a deranged chicken.

The whole class is there to bare witness. I walk over, and I mean walk. I can see Jeremy and most of the class is annoyed by this. This is my way of paying them back for a year of ridicule.

I get the honors of going first. The rules are simple. You get one jump, and the person who jumps the farthest wins.

Jeremy’s big advantage is that he’s bigger than the rest of us. Rumor is he failed kindergarten. If true, this is only a reason, not an excuse. I have every intention of winning.

I sit on the swing, push my feet into the dirt and raise my body as far back as I can. I release and start pumping my legs in a rhythmic motion. I get as high as anyone ever has. I'm moving as fast as anyone ever has. But I know that the release point is where the winner will be decided.

I jump. Immediately I know I have mistimed it. While in the air, I can see just how bad my timing was. This will be one of the worst jumps of the whole contest.

The whole class laughs as I land only three feet in front of the swing. Everyone expected me to fail, but no one expected me to fail this miserably.

Jeremy stops laughing long enough to push me out of the way.

“Move, slow poke. Watch this.”

He pushes back with his feet and releases. He starts pumping his legs, achieving the same height and speed I did. He times his jump perfectly.

Unfortunately—and I say that without sarcasm, I promise—the left side of Jeremy’s shirt snagged on the chain of the swing. After jumping, the tension in his shirt pulled him backwards, and he landed behind the swing. This is the game's first backward jump.

Jeremy landed face first. We all saw this happen in slow motion. His nose compressed against the hard ground, releasing blood. As the swing pulled him backwards, his teeth scraped dirt into the back of his throat.

He stands up, spitting dirt, his face covered in a concoction of blood and dirt. Still attached to the swing, he waves his hands wildly. As he tries to talk, blood is spitting from his mouth. He’s trying to say that the jump should not count. He desperately points to the only part of his shirt that is still clean, the part attached to the swing.

“You only get one jump,” I say. My fellow second graders nod their heads in agreement, then they laugh.

The look on Jeremy's face is priceless. Anger mixed with sorrow, he doesn't know whether to cry or yell at me. He does both.

After having to clean up the mess that was Jeremy, Miss Allen outlawed swing jumping. The contest ended with me being the only undefeated student in the second grade. And Jeremy, he never got over it.

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