Parker let out a screeching scream and bolted across all three green and white painted tennis courts. What the hell just happened? thought Danielle. The only thing she did know was that she needed to get all the other kids as far away from the meltdown as possible, otherwise, poor Parker would never hear the end of their young mocking.
It was the first day of summer camp and as the Director of tennis she had a lot of responsibility, but she didn’t think she would be dealing with unexpected freak-outs and insolent counselors-in-training who weren’t burdened with secret knowledge of the campers. It was supposed to be simple and straight forward; play a game of jail-break where the kids had to hit the ball across the net to remain safe, if they didn’t they went back to jail, the last kid standing received a popsicle. Parker had even come in second, so why when he finally lost the chance to taste the colorful sugar of the Popsicle did he scream and cry?
Danielle slowly made her way across all three tennis courts. Her boss had informed her of little Parker’s past. Little Parker with the light brown hair, little Parker with his bright turquoise eyes, little Parker with the freckles and pre-braces teeth, little Parker had been sexually abused when he was only four years old. When Danielle reached him he was curled up in the corner of the tennis court with his legs tucked underneath himself. Dried tears stained his face and pink skin that matched the blood-shot whites of his eyes, surrounded them.
“You can’t tell any of the other kids that I am giving you this,” she said as she handed him a bright blue Popsicle.
Parker took the Popsicle happily and let the blue ice melt and slide down his throat, finally getting all that he wanted. Poor little Parker didn’t know why he was lashing out at those around him. All he wanted was to have a fun summer playing tennis. Parker and his friend Jack fought all the time, but Parker questioned why Jack was always so angry. He blamed all the anger on Jack and he blamed losing the game on the teacher; when in fact he just kept taking his eye off of the ball. Poor little Parker wanted so badly to win the game that he became distracted with swinging the racket in a perfect arc so that it would send the ball flying. However, that perfect arc wouldn’t make contact with the ball because he wasn’t looking. He couldn’t accept things as his own fault because he was already holding too big of a burden. Only a few years before a man very close to Parker took advantage of him and left him altered for the rest of his life. At least he was taken away from the Horrible Man, thought Danielle.
Danielle and Parker sat in their little private corner of the tennis court until he finished the artificially wonderful Popsicle. Danielle had the urge to do something she would have gritted her teeth over when she was a child, but she did it anyway. She slowly reached out her hand and tousled Parker’s hair that was clearly cut by his mother. Thankfully he didn’t seem to mind the gesture; instead he accepted it and the camaraderie it was meant to inspire. As they walked back Danielle decided to stop pitying poor little Parker, he wasn’t “poor little Parker” he was just Parker, and Parker deserved to have a fun summer full of contact between the racket and ball; the next day when he lost he did not have a meltdown, he accepted that it wasn’t perfect. Still, she would make sure to lightly threaten the other kids to never ever tease Parker as kids unwittingly have a habit of doing.
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