Happiness and Pain

“Life is like a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving”, said Walt Disney. In the book The Hoopster, by Alan Lawrence Sitomer, the author relates this idea to life in so many ways and shows how racism hurts other people.

In the book The Hoopster, somewhat it’s a sad story but then again it’s not because the main character Andre Anderson is surrounded by his best friend Shawn and his cousin Cedric. Those three love to play basketball. They are competitive when they play with each other, and usually they argue about who won and who cheated but at the end of every game it’s with laughter, jokes and Happiness. Andre is the best left handed player on the team; in fact he’s the best player on the team period. But Andre doesn’t just like basketball he has the dream of becoming a Journalist so he tries to secure a Job this summer working at a Magazine. I think for being a young teenager and knowing what he wants to be when he grows up is amazing, because there are grown-ups that still don’t even know what they would like to do for a living. It’s good that he has an idea of what he wants to be because it’s a chance that he might change his mind and want to be something else later in life.

Shawn, Andre's best friend thinks that Andre spends too much time on working, so Shawn introduces Andre to a Latino girl named Gwen, who is extremely sweet to Andre. When Andre stresses over anything Gwen is there to help Andre take his mind off things and lets him just relax. I think would be the perfect girl for Andre because she’s kind, respectful, encouraging and not a wild child. Andre is sometimes the total opposite, and I think opposites attract so their perfect for each other.

Andre’s boss wants Andre to write an Article on racism. While Andre finished the Article and was put on display the next night when Andre was walking home from a basketball practice Andre was violently attacked by a racist gang that doesn’t like black people and it was bad for Andre because he was black. Andre was sent to the hospital with his friends and family is left wondering whether or not he will recover from the attack.

Fortunately he recovered from the horrible attack but Andre was badly injured on his right arm. When Shawn came inside the emergency room and saw Andre in the bed Andre had said to Shawn “those people who beat me up are stupid they ruined my right arm but I’m left handed” Andre said with a chuckle Shawn tries to enjoy the joke but he can’t just laugh because he see’s Andre in this condition. But Shawn was just admiring how strong Andre is because he was in pain in a hospital bed and still had a smile on his face that’s brave.

As you can see the author relates to life in so many ways and shows how racism hurts other people. I admire Andre’s bravery because he seems like he could be a good role model for kids and I think he is going far in life especially because now he knows what it’s like to be on the edge of his life not know if he would live or die. And even after being attacked he had a big grin on his face.

Mr. Mason's Jar

I think what was inside that jar was a finger. I think the finger was so gross that it scared him for life. It was probably alive too because not any ordinary finger was going to scar him, It had to be the ultimate most revolting finger he ever saw.