English 10h
Sheehan
1/28/2019
Benjamin Mathew

Sunday school competitions
If you think all we do is fix computers and sell stuff at the gas station you are almost completely wrong! There are a couple things that let you know that you are an Indian kid. First things first, if you’re not a doctor, lawyer or an engineer you’re automatically a disgrace to the family. As far back as I could remember about 10 years ago, I could remember going to these competitions for religion called Pentecostal
Youth Fellowship New Jersey and New York (PYFNJNY). I would go to a church filled with kids ranging from 5 to 24 years old participating in these competitions. I was the youngest one there and you don’t even want to know what would happen if I came second place for any of my events. Let me break this down for you, the events were memory, Bible quiz, singing (I suck at singing) and playing the piano. My competition was against kids from 5 to 7 years old. Trust me when they called my name to go next on stage, I was peeing my pants. I was so scared my ears looked like they were dipped in red paint. As I stood in front of

100s of people I just saw my parents sitting in the front row with their cameras pointing at me. I sang my song as best as possible, which was in a different language called Malayalam. I was positive I got 1 st in my group because all the other kids didn’t know how to sing in Malayalam and all the judges that were at the competition gave more points to the kid who sang in Malayalam. Coming in 2 nd place was the worst thing, but somehow, I came in 1 st place and crushed everyone. When my brother and I would compete in the same group we would both share 1 st place except for one time because he did better than me in one thing. I was the happiest kid that day, but for some reason I was a little envious that my brother did better than me. For the next 10 years my brother and I would compete in PYFNJNY and earn 1 st place, but every year the competition had less and less kids. I remembered when earning 1 st place was so hard, but now earning 1 st place just became like a up the sleeve thing where I could just pull out a 1 st place trophy. I would come back every year with 8-10 trophies and I had the biggest smile on my face.

Chapter 2
Starting at 7 years old my brother has always been speaking in front of others and preaching the Bible to our church and other churches, couple of times he got invited to speak at a youth convention. Well I was the dumb kid in the family, I was shy, and I never really liked talking to other people. Often my parents always compared me to my brother which was sometimes a good thing and sometimes a bad thing. I was never into speaking or any religious stuff. I always sat in the front row in church and I was the only one to be snoring. My parents would give me a 35-minute speech on how I should listen to the pastor and be more religious. I was the type of kid who loved sports and HATED reading, but I don’t know somethings changed when I entered high school. Let’s not get into high school drama yet because that will take about 400 hours to explain. Anyways, back to what I was saying, church was never really my thing, I was used to eating sugary things and playing games and beating my brother in checkers. I don’t know why, but as I got older, I became lazier and more stupid. Let’s talk about elementary, man was elementary the worst. Normally kids would talk about how they

had the best time in elementary and the had sleeping/nap time during the school day, well yeah that was all fun, but I got bullied the most in school. I was a tall skinny Indian kid who tried to play sports. I tried to fit in with the so-called cool kids, but that went downhill fast. At my school we had a 6 ½ foot hoop and a 10-foot hoop. All the cool kids played at the big hoop while I played at the 6 ½ foot hoop by myself. I had a lot of fun because I was able to dunk on the small hoop, but all that fun changed when some kid came and pulled my pants down, I was humiliated, ashamed, and made fun of because first I got pantsed then everyone saw my spider man underwear. Still to this day people tell me sometimes “hey Ben, you remember that time you got pantsed”. Well too bad all the kids that bullied me then might have called me names that I never wished to hear but let me tell I can beat up every kid that bullied me back then.
Chapter 3

Where were we? Oh yeah now I remember, I was entering my first day of middle school and it was the best feeling ever. I finally felt like a cool kid and it was amazing. You know what was not so amazing, seeing my schedule. My brother is only 2 years older than me, so he was in the eighth grade. I went to all my classes, but the most confusing and hardest thing was opening my locker. I loved 6 th grade other than a few couple things and people but trust me 7 th grade and 8 th grade were the worst. I had some of the worst years of my life in middle school. You know what happened? I got suspended twice in 7 th grade, man it was crazy. Some kid on my bus slapped me in the face for no reason and my policy was if someone hits you, you got to beat their bums.