Something Separated Softball from Every Other Failed Activity
By Carly Blustein, 11 th grade

There’s this little thing called a forte. Basically, it’s what you’re good at, what makes you shine and what shoves you dead center into that spotlight. Throughout my life, I’ve always been yearning to know what my forte is.

To discover it, I involved myself with random activities, hoping I’d be good at them, much like Amy Tan’s mother in The Joy Luck Club. Way back, before I had the wisdom to argue it, my mother ruthlessly enrolled me in dance lessons. Suddenly, my toddler world had been transformed into a jumble of tap, ballet, and acro classes. Unfortunately, I destructively scratched the wood with my tap shoes; I couldn’t get past first position in ballet; and my headstands were more like a direct plummet to the ground in acro training.

Next I tried musical instruments. In the sixth grade I thought it might be an exciting challenge to take up the viola in my orchestra class. Okay, I must’ve cried three times a week in that class, just by rosining my bow. So then in seventh grade, I got really creative and begged my parents for piano lessons. My teacher was a certified lunatic who didn’t even stick around long enough to teach me the C cord.

Finally, in the middle of my tenth grade year, as I was basking in my lack of talents, my friend Christine casually brought up the idea of trying out for softball. HA! Me, an athlete? No, no, no. (Side note: I tried intramural soccer in middle school, and I somehow managed not to make the team.)

But I knew my forte had to be somewhere in this crazy, mixed up world. So my next hypothesis for its whereabouts was right field on the JV softball team.

Saying I was "bad" at softball was an understatement. "Bad" would be an improvement. I was the catastrophe of softball. It was a five-step motion to chuck the ball three feet in the air. As for batting, the balls never saw me coming. To put it correctly, I never saw the balls coming. Is it outrageously abnormal to get hit in the head with the ball three times during your first season? My coaches and teammates would jokingly tell me the glove belonged on my face.

However, something separated softball from every other failed activity I’d attempted in my life. I loved playing softball. No matter how pitiful my hint of athletic ability proved to be, I thoroughly enjoyed every foul ball and every crack of the bat during my games and practices. During that season, I had the privilege to be on a team with an amazing bunch of girls, who, despite their overriding success in softball, treated me like the player I worked so hard to become.

I’d love to end this inspirational rendering with the tales of our success and my whizzing that ball to the sky, but that just isn’t the scenario here. Our team actually had a perfect season that year, a flawless record with no wins to date. I got up to bat a grand total of two times, shamelessly striking out each time.

A forte is defined “as something at which a person excels.” Well, this certainly wasn’t the case for my softball experiences, but maybe what I was really searching for was a passion. You don’t have to be the best player on the team to truly love the sport.

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