From Rags to Royalties One of my favorite quotes that relate to my event is in the movie “Rocky”, he sees his son getting pushed around by people and says [“nothing is going to hit you harder than life, but it’s not about how hard you can get hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”] That quote has stuck with me for a long time; I have overcome a lot of life’s struggles. Struggles I thought would affect me for the rest of my life, but I took that quote and put it into my life. Life hit me pretty hard in middle school but I kept moving forward and I am stronger than I will ever be. From kindergarten to fifth grade, I didn’t have a problem making friends. I was probably considered one of the cool kids in school. The usual cool kid who plays all these sports, and all the girls liked him, that was me. Although I was much shorter than the girls that liked me I still was an impressive athlete to them. Then one day, I walked into my house with a garage full of boxes. I walked to the kitchen where I heard my mom and dad talking and found out we were moving to a smaller town for better sports opportunities. We moved into a house in a really nice neighborhood. My sixth grade year went very well; I made a lot of good friends. Not necessarily a part of the cool group because the football players, who where considered the cool group, were jerks. At this point I loved Coweta, it was a fresh new start and I was excited to see where sports would take me. When my seventh grade year came around, it was time to start school basketball. I was so excited to meet my new teammates and coach and show them what dribbling, passing, and shooting skills I had brought with me from Broken Arrow. So as the first practice came up I was so excited, the kids seemed cool. One of my best friends was in there with me, but know one ever messed with him because he had been going to Coweta schools for a while. The first sign of bullying was when this tall, bigger kid moved to our school for sports as well. So to seem cool and tough in front of everyone he started coming up to me and slapping me into the face. Calling me very vulgar names because I was the smallest kid on the team I didn’t do anything back because K didn’t want to screw up my chances of being kicked off the basketball team. [Similar to the story “Food Shock: You are What You Eat”] In the story, these kids judge an over weight man at a pizza shop because he ate eight slices of pizza, but a couple tables down from the man there was a pretty fit kid who ate the same amount. The kids didn’t say anything to the skinnier, more in shape boy. They bullied and laughed at the overweight man, (Chamberlain 146). (This is just how the Coweta kids bullied me. Instead it was because I was smaller and weak,) but didn’t do anything to the bigger stronger boys. The slapping and name calling went on every single day from that point forward, then one day before one of our games all the guys were calling me vulgar names and shoving me. So I stood up to them and said, “shut up! Why do you mess with me all the time, is it because you can’t stand up to someone your size? All of them except my best friend came after me, held my hands behind my back as one of the kids punched me repeatedly in the stomach. After that I had it, I went home and balled in my mom’s arms with so much anger telling her everything that happened. She told me she was going to talk to the coach Norris about it and it will end tomorrow. I felt so much better and thought it would be take n care of. The next day after basketball practice coach Norris told me and the kid who slapped me to stay after. He told both of us to get on the line. I asked him what I did wrong, he started yelling at me calling me a liar, saying that I started all of this and told the other kid to go to the locker room and shower while I had to run more and do pus- ups. Thinking about that moment today makes me realize that made me a stronger