Hammer

://drukhier.nl/demo/components/com_virtuemart/shop_image/product/Hammer_4926f26d96402.jpg

Pop quiz, kiddoes! As an ESFJ², I am most likely to be found:

A. In a soup kitchen, feeding small children while simultaneously having mini heart attacks over the lack of sanitary conscientiousness among children. (“ESFJ's are... not paranoid, but VERY cautious”³).

B. Partying like it's 1999 (or 2000, or 2001, or 2002... I'm an extrovert.)

C. Watching Bambi and crying because Walt Disney just HAD to kill off Bambi's mother and I am “easily affected emotionally”⁴, aka pathetically weepy.

I do tend to get very emotional in movies, probably owing to my ESFJ personality. The first time I saw Bambi at age 6, I had to leave the room and regroup for a bit after his mother died. However, I did not grow out of my emotional tendencies. When I as 13 I had to leave the room when ET was shown lying in a ditch, and this sort of thing will most likely continue to happen to me.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Bambi.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_rZHry3yxLM/SFce4rDiicI/AAAAAAAACfo/HEiosavWwrI/s400/et3.jpg

D. Standing, miserable, wet, and cold, on the track, at 10 o'clock on a Friday night while a torrent of drizzling rain stretches my mouth down, down, down until I'm frowning like Adele's imitation of Mr. Rochester in the 1940's version of Jane Eyre.

Though I was unable to find a photograph of Adele, the frown on this child's face is very representative of my frown.

http://willbecontinued.files.wordpress.com/2006/08/frown-front.jpg

Yeah... I'm not thrilled about this whole track meet thing. But, you know, I'm an ESFJ! I “forego what personal dilemmas [I] may face to help carry on the [team] goals!”⁵. You know what though? Coach was just RUDE to me, I'm telling you⁶. He should be “[encouraging me and making me feel] safe”⁷. Yeah, when you look up safe in the dictionary? It doesn't include coaches springing on you that you're running the mile 30 minutes before the event⁸. I don't feel safe at all. In fact, I am slightly close to losing my mind with fear⁹.

Stupid Kelly Anderson¹⁰. She just HAD to be an overachiever and try high jump, and then she HAD to go and sprain her ankle, and then she HAD to go and tell Coach she wasn't running the mile, and she HAD to suggest that, since I only run the 800, I should take her place. Thanks a lot, Kelly. I'll remember this next time you ask me to help you with your Spanish homework¹¹. Screw foregoing personal dilemmas. My hands are blue. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE.

I jump up and down, trying to keep warm so when the race starts I'm not stiff. Why, I don't know, since everyone else on the team has retreated back to the bus¹², so I could soulja boy¹³ my way around the track and no one would ever know except Coach, who obviously has no concern for my health and therefore does not deserve effort. Apparently the personal dilemmas of my teammates were not great enough to overpower their need for warmth. I, on the other hand, because of my LOVELY personality, am trying to remember what it felt like when I didn't have to look at my fingers to make sure they were still attached to my body¹⁴.

This is part of the soulja dance I considered doing around the track. However, I would probably have never actually done this, because I'm actually pretty sensitive to how other people think of me, as my ESFJ personality hints at. This would have been just a little too embarrassing.

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/11_02/souljadance2_468x312.jpg

Oh, GREAT. They're lining us up. Awesome. I'm really living the dream here, aren't I? Some teenagers would want to, oh, I don't know, be with friends on a Friday night. Not me. Fridays are for freezing!

The starter is so grotesquely bundled all I can see is the tip of his nose. I cannot take this guy seriously. I mean, he's dressed like the abominable snowman. Still, I “respect the [track] chain of command”¹⁵ like the ESFJ that I am and shiver my way over to my lane, my muscles creaking and every fiber of my being yelling at me to run for the nearest forest fire and throw myself in it¹⁶. You think I sound suicidal? I'm in shorts and a sleeveless jersey in the freezing rain, OK? What I'm doing right NOW is suicidal.

The starter was wearing a jacket very similar to this abominable snowman's fur coat, although I don't remember him having such pointed teeth.

http://buttercuppunch.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/mn013_abominable_snowman.jpg

BAM!

All the intense kids take off. I, instead, yelp, take a confused step back, pray that the God will strike the abominable snowman with lightning for scaring me with the starting gun, and follow them.

*~*~*~*~*

Everyone always does the first lap too fast. I don't know if all track runners have impatient personalities, or if they just get overly excited when they see the black tar stretched out before them, but I'm about 15 meters behind by the time I finally get started, and I KNOW I wasn't standing at the starting line in confusion all that long.

“Get up there 'Costa!” bellows Coach through his thick southern accent.

I grit my teeth, push back repressed memories of evil coaches past¹⁷, and work my way “up there”.

I focus on the ostentatious pink scrunchy that adorns the ponytail of one of the runners in front of me and decide to catch up with her. This is probably not the smartest thing I've ever done, considering she's... winning. But Coach said to get “up there”, and I have just defined what “up there is”: the front.¹⁸

By the end of the first lap, I'm sweating icicles¹⁹, panting, and... in 12^th place. (As opposed to 16^th place, which is where I started. I'm moving up in the world, apparently.) Rain droplets pelt me like little ice bullets as I continue my trek and when I pass the stands that line the track a camera flashes from one of the few lone parents still braving the elements.

Well that's going to be a GREAT picture, isn't it? Thanks a lot, my budding photographer friend. I was afraid I might forget this wonderful experience of agony, but now, because you have forever preserved it in the form of that picture. I can relive it over and over again!

Now obviously this picture is from cross country, not track, but the point I have to make is the same. No one wants pictures taken of them while they are suffering. It is just not pretty. Is it any wonder I was upset by the anonymous parent photographer? I really didn't think any more of these pictures needed to be brought into existence.

Picture taken by my mother.

Pushing down the urge to jump into the stands and wrestle the camera out of the photographers hands, I instead channel my anger towards a more profitable goal, namely my pursuit of the pink scrunchy bobbing ahead of me.²⁰ The scrunchy is considerably closer then when the race started but still a good 100 meters ahead, and we're already on our third lap. I push my pace a bit, trying to close the gap between us while also desperately ignoring the fact that I have a huge cramp where my heart should be.

Ding!!!!!!!!²¹

The pink scrunchy has started her last lap, and I follow suit, 60 meters later. I'm almost done, I'm almost done, I'm ALMOST DONE, and the Earth falls out from under me and I HAMMER, my feet pounding the floor, my legs flying, my pain floating somewhere, forgotten, my eyes trained on the bobbing pink that looms ever closer, ever closer, ever closer and then there it is, I can touch it if I want to but instead, I go around it, and ay Dios mio²² were racing, and I think people are cheering but I can't tell because the wind is in my ears and I want it I want it I want it²³ and...

I'm done.

I try to catch my breathe as someone pushes a second place ribbon into my hand and then I smile, because as much as I complain about hating running, there are moments, like this, when I know that underneath my sarcasm I love it the way only an ESFJ can: with a passionate, “boiling” emotion ²⁴ that even the most terrible weather conditions can't dampen.²⁵

Word Count: 2306

1Hammer, in this story, refers to two things. The first is Yeats' quote, where he says to “hammer your thoughts into unity”. Throughout this story, I'm going to have conflicting thoughts and emotions about running, which, in the end, I'm going to have to figure out how to hammer together. The second thing referenced in this title is the moment, at the end of a race, when a runner gives everything she has left.

Quote from: Bump, Jerome. “Goals.” In E 603 Composition and Reading in World Literature Fall 2009, 15.

2In this story, I'm going to be exploring how my personality type, ESFJ, affects me, as well as in what ways it does and doesn't describe me. I will also be exploring the idea of “[hammering]... thoughts into unity” .

Quote from: Bump, 15

3Tayi, Saumya. “Typology Assessment of Instructor and Class.” In E 603 Composition and Reading in World Literature Fall 2009, Compiled by Jerome Bump, 143.

4Tayi, 143

5Tayi, Saumya. “Typology Assessment of Instructor and Class.” In E 603 Composition and Reading in World Literature Fall 2009, Compiled by Jerome Bump, 143.

6I know that I sound scandalized by Coach's treatment of me but I really just should not be surprised. This is a man who I slaved away for my entire high school existence and who still, on the last meet of my senior year, called me Laura.

7Tayi, 143

8I'm aware that most people are not as familiar with the logistics of high school track as I am, but basically 2 hours is the minimum warning time you're supposed to give someone before a race. There are a couple of reasons for this. First of all, if the runner has been eating, they can have time to digest their food. Runners need about 45 minutes to an hour to warm up, and they may, depending on how serious they are, need to come up with a strategy for the race. Granted, I “tend to leap... with little planning”, so this last time-consuming factor was not really a problem for me, but I still would have liked some down time before I needed to start warming up!

Quote from: DiTiberio, John K. and George H. Jensen. “Approaches to Writing.” In E 603 Composition and Reading in World Literature Fall 2009, Compiled by Jerome Bump, 148.

9High school track meets are nerve-wracking, but when you are asked to run an event you have not trained for, they are like something out of a horror movie. Some of the kids competing are training to be college athletes, and there you are, five minutes before the race starts, only recently informed that there are 4 laps in a mile, about to compete against them. So I think you can understand why I was terrified.

10Enter Kelly Anderson, the epitome of high school track perfection. Most people are good at one or two events: Kelly is good at EVERYTHING. This usually works in my favor, because it means that the coaches put her in a million and a half events and everyone else in just one or two. Obviously, though, in this case, since the golden girl is unable to perform her duties, it's up to someone (me) to take up the slack.

11Not sure if this needs an explanation, but I'll give the short version. Kelly fails at learning Spanish. I am quite talented at Spanish. Kelly often asks me to help her. I usually do. From this point forward, she will no longer be receiving my help because it is her fault I am enduring the torture that is the mile.

12The track is a few miles from the school, so we took a bus to get there. However, the bus, at this point, is the warmest place for miles, so my über-supportive team decided to put their warmth ahead of me and stay on the bus until the meet is over.

13Soulja' boy- A ridiculous dance and matching song that gained popularity a couple years ago. Very inappropriate song, slightly too-stupid-to-be-done-in-public dance.

14I am numb. Very, very, very numb. It is not a pleasant feeling.

15Tayi, Saumya. “Typology Assessment of Instructor and Class.” In E 603 Composition and Reading in World Literature Fall 2009, Compiled by Jerome Bump, 143.

16Not only would I be far away from the track meet which is scaring the heck out of me, I'd also be warm!

17 I had a volleyball coach once who would spend entire games yelling at us. It was third grade Town and Country. I don't know if you've ever heard of Town and Country, but it is a recreational league. As in the only people who ever come to the games are the parents of the children participating in them. As in the entire crowd cheers when one child attempts to touch the ball. As in if we ever had a real volley, where the ball was served to one side of the court and actually hit back over the net, they would probably have to call an ambulance for all the overexcited fathers in the audience.

Joe Butt says on typelogic.com that ESFJ's are “easily wounded”, so maybe that's why I used to get so upset when the coach would yell at me during those games, but regardless, I think there's a way to be a tough coach without spending entire games picking apart the self esteem of your players. Might I remind you that my team and I were NINE YEARS OLD! I bet half of us end up on Oprah, exploring the pains of our 3rd volleyball experiences under the miraculous self-esteem killing machine.

Quote from: Butt, Joe. “Extraverted Sensing Feeling Judging”. Typelogic.com, http://typelogic.com/esfj.html.

18This is an example of me being an insane person and setting completely unrealistic goals. In the anthology it says that as a judging person, setting “unambitious goals” should be a weakness of mine. I definitely have the opposite problem from that. I am constantly setting goals that I am fully aware I will never achieve. The cheesy explanation for this is that, as my mom used to say, if you reach for the moon, and you don't make it, at least you'll still be among the stars. The non-cheesy explanation is that I like the feeling of setting about an impossible task. If I had to be specific about what that feeling is, I'd say it's akin to panic: The panic of knowing that if you don't give it you're all, you won't even be close to achieving your goal.

Quote from: DiTiberio, John K. and George H. Jensen. “Approaches to Writing.” In E 603 Composition and Reading in World Literature Fall 2009, Compiled by Jerome Bump, 154.

19This is a metaphor meaning that, though I am sweating, it is a cold sweat that just serves to amplify the arctic conditions of the race.

20Joe Butt also says that ESFJ's do not “infrequently [boil] over with the vexation in their souls”. Notice, though, that I am perfectly capable of controlling myself. I do not run around “boiling over” on unsuspecting supportive photographer parent wannabees. I instead channel my emotions so that they can become useful.

Quote from: Butt, Joe. “Extraverted Sensing Feeling Judging”. Typelogic.com, http://typelogic.com/esfj.html.

21Runners get really ridiculously tired when they're racing, and they sometimes forget what lap they're on, so as a courtesy, when the first-place runner starts her last lap they ding a bell to let them know they're almost done.

22Puerto Rican for OH MY GOD.

23It being to finish first.

24Butt

25At this point in the story, I am, like E.M. Forster, “[living] in fragments no longer”. I have unified all of my conflicting emotions towards this race (the feeling that I was pushed into it, the competitive pull set by the pink scrunchy, and my loyalty to my team) and come up with the verdict: I love this sport. Awesomely enough, it was the Hammer I used at the end of this race that made this possible. Literally and figuratively, I “[hammered my] thoughts into unity” .

Quote from: Bump, Jerome. “Goals.” In E 603 Composition and Reading in World Literature Fall 2009, 15.