My Friend Jonathan by Christopher

My Friend Jonathan by Christopher - October 2013 Scholarship Essay

Walking off the tennis court, I was dripping with sweat, ecstatic with my semi-final win. My next match would be at 2 o'clock and I needed to get some rest before the championship. To pass the time, I walked over to the bulletin boards to look at the draws and results. At the same time, I noticed a group of four boys about two years older than me fooling around, throwing a ball back and forth. As I watched them play, I noticed that one of the boys was always a little slower than the rest. That boy, whom I later understood was autistic, was jumping up and down helplessly calling for the ball. The other three boys did not pay any attention to him. As I stood there, I started to feel badly for the excluded boy and felt the urge to say something to the other boys. However, one thing got in my way: Fear. I was afraid that the boys would think that I was a loser, or even worse, autistic as well. These were the older boys, the coolest tennis players at the tournament. I couldn't be seen standing up against them. I stood there motionless, too scared to take a stand for the autistic boy.

After a few minutes, the disable boy skipped up to me and asked if I could throw the ball with him. Suddenly I felt like all the eyes in the world were staring at me. I looked up; all the boys had stopped their game, waiting for my answer. At this moment, I made a choice that I would always regret. “I have a match in ten minutes, I don't want to tire myself out,” I lied. I walked away with a feeling of remorse and disappointment in myself.

A few years later, after I had totally forgotten about this incident, I began to search for ways to gain some community service hours. As a last minute decision, I decided to volunteer as a camp counselor at Young Life Capernaum, a program designed to care and teach high school students who have special needs and disabilities. There, I was in charge of waking up the kids in the morning, changing and feeding them, leading bible studies, and organizing activities for them. At first, I was really self-conscious and felt uncomfortable feeding them and wiping their drool. I was totally out of my comfort zone.

I was paired with Jonathan, a paraplegic whose speech was slurred, similar to that of Steven Hawking. Initially, I could not understand him at all and felt terrible asking him to repeat things several times each time he spoke to me. However, as I spent every waking hour with him for a week, I began to understand him perfectly and felt comfortable feeding and changing him. On the last day of camp, Jonathan made a joke and all the kids at the dinner table turned to look at me, expecting me to translate what Jonathan had said. It hit me that I was the only one who could understand Jonathan and that my service to him was so much more than just earning community service hours.

This new understanding helped me mature from a proud child that was obsessed with his reputation to a man whose mindset was focused on putting others first. Ever since that week, I have continued my service and I am currently a lead volunteer at Capernaum. Jonathan as well as the other kids are some of my best friends and they have radically impacted my life. Looking back to my earlier encounter with the autistic boy, I cringe with regret, but, at the same time, I rejoice in the change in my life. What started out as a community service ended up helping me more that the kids. Whenever I come across someone who has special needs or needs any help in any way, I use that experience to remind me to never focus on my needs, but on the needs of others.