Megan: My Autistic Friend by Sam

Megan: My Autistic Friend by Sam - December 2013 Scholarship Essay

I firmly cloaked my palm over the leather handle and focused on the intertwining patterns on the strings of my racket. Swinging my racket back, I slowly showed Megan the motions of hitting a tennis ball. As I placed her hand over the racket, I felt her fingers shake uncontrollably. She broke out into a cold sweat and peered over her shoulder several times to make sure her sister was still sitting by the bench. I continued to stand by Megan’s side, showing her the low-to-high forehand technique. But moments later, she immediately dropped her racket and scampered behind the tennis bench, hiding from me. Her sister looked at me apologetically, but I smiled back, repeatedly assuring her that Megan would eventually learn how to play tennis. Yet each week, Megan dove behind her sister and my whole-hearted assurance slowly began to fade away. Megan would hardly look at me and her nonverbal communication had become heavier than her few words at practice. I knew that teaching Megan tennis would be a bold journey—one that required both patience and perseverance—because Megan had autism.

On one afternoon before our tennis lesson, Megan sat on the bench politely chewing her baby carrot. Having a carrot in one hand, she held a phone in her other hand that was playing her favorite TV show, Lazytown. When she told me her favorite character from Lazytown was “the girl” I started comparing Megan to “the girl.” “The girl” was the heroine: the most appreciated and most liked in Lazytown, and I identified Megan with those virtues. The improvised comparisons and associations I made between Megan and “the girl,” the center-stage attention she received on the tennis court, and her caring sister who helped her throughout practice brought a faint but unquestionable smile to her face. Slowly, I saw her open up to me. Although it was difficult for Megan to express feelings of gratitude, I felt her appreciation through her consistent attendance to my tennis classes. She rarely missed a practice and eventually picked out her own racket from the tennis bag and stood at the other side of the net, anticipating my endless words of praise. Finally, one day, Megan sailed the ball over the net and a delighted smile stretched across her face. Megan had hit a tennis ball over the net for the first time.

Like Megan’s effort to understand tennis, I experienced a similar challenge as a violinist. For years, I sat in the back of the philharmonic orchestra at Jacoby Symphony Hall trying to plow through 45 minutes of a painstaking symphony. But when I placed myself in Megan’s shoes—the difficulty for her to stay focused on the ball, to time the ball coming over the net, to set her racket facing the net, and to finally strike the ball— she inspired me to take a closer examination of the talents I have as a musician. Unbolting Tchaikovsky’s final symphonic movement in his Pathétique written just before his death with more emotion and dignity, I visualized Megan’s perseverance striking the ball over the net and the smile that followed her shot with youthful forte on a 1764 antique Bolognese violin.

Coaching a gang of 8-year-olds from the bench of a broken-down YMCA gym, I remembered sitting by Megan, trying to calm her nerves as she first tried tennis. Similarly, before and after each basketball game, I huddled with the boys calming their anxieties and challenged them to do better next week. Whatever stage surrounded me, a glossy symphony hall or worn-out gym floor, it was the pursuit in teaching Megan tennis under the bright Floridian sun that inspired me to discover my individual talents and shine them onto others through the activities I participated in. So when the winning shot drained the basket, the ball sailed across the net, and the last note on my violin stilled, a glowing smile stretched across the young children’s faces, Megan’s—and ultimately, mine.