I’ve been waiting. It seems like everyone around me is getting bigger by the day, everyone except me. I’ve been waiting. My dad is 6’4 and ½” and my older brother is 17 and almost as tall as my dad. My mom and dad keep telling me to be patient. The doctor told me to be patient. “Just wait,” he said. “You will be very tall soon.”
Freshman year in high school is hard. The workload is a lot more than I expected. But the one thing I thought I could count on was that all of my friends would be in the same boat as me. They would all be nervous. They would be intimidated by the bigger, older seniors. But, something happened to most of my friends over the summer. Most of them went through puberty. They have pimples and deep voices and are jacked. They also changed in another way. With their new bodies, they gained a different kind of confidence. They no longer are afraid of being bullied. Instead, many of them are now the bullies. They call me, “baby” and “wus” and tell me I’m never going grow so I shouldn’t bother trying out for the basketball team – the same team we all played on last year. They hang out with the older kids.
It’s so confusing. My dad keeps telling me that anyone who hit puberty in 8th grade is done. He even had the doctor tell me that. My mom said that the doctor told her when my older brother was a freshman that the later you go through puberty, the taller you will be. My mom keeps saying over and over, “Work on your brains, the brawn will come later.” That’s so annoying.
I keep waiting. I wish I had a date of when I will grow. One thing I know for sure is that when I do get bigger, I will treat anyone smaller than me a lot better.