It’s gym class in a gym about half the size of a regular gym — because in kindergarten you’re half the size of a regular person — and it’s the bottom of the ninth in our “baseball” game with a Wiffle Ball bat and a plastic white ball with circular holes, and my team’s up by a run, and I’m playing left field, there are two outs, the bases are loaded, and, well, this is a stressful situation: if Mike Gallagher gets a hit here, we’re going to lose, and here’s the pitch, and he smacks it, and it’s blazing toward me but hooking to my right, and I run and lunge at it and it barely clips my right hand and … whoa … it’s stuck to my hand, my pinky is stuck in one of the little holes, and Mike slams his bat on the floor, and this means I have caught the ball, which means the game’s over, which means we’ve won, and my teammates are hugging me, going crazy, loving me, and it occurs to me for the first time that sometimes all it takes is a little blind fucking luck to be a goddamn hero.
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