Peter Lee’s Notes from the Field

Chapter 1
MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU
TUESDAY, MAY 14, LUNCH
CONDITIONS: LIGHT RAIN, HIGH HUMIDITY
The ball came at me so fast I barely had time to throw my right hand up in the air to block it. But just like Deinocheirus, a dinosaur from the late Cretaceous period, I have unusually long arms. The leather of the ball grazed my gloved finger- tips. I had just counteracted a basic scientific law: the ball would have stayed in motion and sailed right through the goalpost if I hadn’t applied the smallest amount of force. Force wreaks havoc on motion, and in this case, it caused the ball to change its trajectory, leading to the sweetest sound a goalie can hear thunk. The ball firmly hit the goalpost and rebounded back into play. That was a close one.
“No!” Ryan Gagnon screamed as he clenched his fists and arched his back in frustration. “You got lucky, Peter!” He clearly did not understand physics at all. Luck has no part in science.
We glared at each other briefly and then Ryan ran ahead to keep close to the action. I leaned against my goalpost and watched the other boys
run back to the far end of the field. It wasn’t long before they stopped to argue.
“I did not!” Ryan shouted.
“I saw it, Ryan! You’re lying!” Joe Flores threw his hands up. “It was so totally a handball!” Joe was my good buddy and an excellent judge of character.
The rain was starting to come down, but we never called games off because of the weather. Sometimes I walked around with wet shoes all day and didn’t notice until I got home and peeled my socks off instead of toes, I had stinky prunes.
It looked like the argument was going to be a while, so I ripped off my goalie gloves and patted my front pant pockets. I felt the familiar lumps of my small coil notebook in my left pocket and my inhaler in my right pocket. My asthma was getting better the older I got I hadn’t even had to go to the emergency room in a few years but I was still supposed to take a dose every day and an extra dose before exercise, not during exercise. Sometimes, like today, I forgot to follow the plan. I made sure it was a good time to turn my back to the game so I could privately take a quick puff.
The game had come to a complete stop. Even if he had touched the ball, Ryan would never admit it. Joe was trying to argue, but this was Ryan. I sighed and waited for the game to resume. I needed to keep loose, so I swung my long arms around and around like helicopter blades. As a goalie, the only player on the field who can use their arms, all this height has an advantage. At five foot nine, I’m the tallest boy in my fifth-grade class. I get to stand in the middle of the back row for the class photo. That’s the Top Dog spot and it has been mine for years.
I am really freaky-tall if you factor in the Korean thing. The Korean thing being that I’m a Canadian-born Korean. Koreans are known for lots of things: electronics, cheap cars with a weird company name, addictive TV shows and K-pop; but Koreans aren’t known for their height. I break all the rules.