Trials & Tribulations of a 3% Child

Growing up I took a liking to being above average in various ways. I was an above average athlete overall, no matter what the sport I could do better than most, given time. In school I was always a straight A student and would literally cry if I got a B. Making friends for me was easy due to both of those things as well. When it came to other things such as video games I took a deep interest in being able to do better than others as well and would go through fits when I couldn't figure out a way to beat certain people and would rather lose to that person 20 straight times rather than play someone I knew I could beat easily. To say I was an overachiever would be kind, I just looked at it as a challenge and early on I figured it's better to stick out for being above average than anything else.

Summertime for most kids growing up involved summer camps, family vacations, sports camps and all sorts of stories of trouble you may have got into with friends. In my early years that definitely wasn't the case. My family didn't have much money to take family vacations or send 5 kids to any kind of summer or sport camps. Also, my cousins would basically live at my place during the summer as well for multiple reasons. So where that may be a recipe for disaster, we on the otherhand came up with many fun and productive things to do. We actually had school and would go through the day as a shortened and of course more fun version of school. My older sisters and brother designed our classes and graded our work. We had a nice variety of things, math, english, current events, social studies, art and gym.

My younger brother and cousins often did work that would get them ready for what they were going to be doing the upcoming year. Me being me however would end up doing math almost at the level of my older brother and sisters and I took a deep interest in a certain part of current events, that being anything having to deal with money. This would become my two main areas of interest that I focused on as I got older. I figured if you want to make money you have to be good with math and knowing what's going on now involving different aspects of how it is made and spent. So that's what my summers consisted of in my early years and they were very memorable and I appreciate them til this day. I learned a lot, had a lot of fun with my brothers, sisters and cousins, and went into the next school year beyond prepared to tackle the course work.

I started playing organized football at the age of 5 and I guess this is where the overachieving really started. My older brother played the year prior and at that time I was told I had to wait a year. When I eventually came out to play I mistakenly ended up on a team that was intended for kids older than me but still I ended up making a name for myself. I excelled way beyond the talents of many of the players who had already been playing for a number of years. When I was informed that I was on the wrong team the coaches of the younger team were eager to get me to play, although it was my choice whether or not I wanted to move down or not. Let's just say they knew how to sway a kid easily. I ended up playing about 5 different positions, one of which was of course running back. I dominated at every position they eventually put me at and this is when football became my first true love. As I grew older I learned many lessons from football alone that help groom me for life and that's another reason I will always love football.