STORY "Forrest Gump" - Chapter Two
Life
at University
Whe we got the university, Coach
Bryant came to talk to us.
“Last man to get to the practice
field will get a ride there on my shoe!” he shouted at us. And he meant it when
he said that kind of thing. We soon learned that.
The building that I went to live
in was nice on the outside but not on the inside. Most of the doors and windows
were broken, and the floor was dirty. I lived in a room with a man called
Curtis. He crashed into the room with a wild look in his eyes. He wasn’t very
tall, but he was very strong. “Where are you from?” he asked.
“Mobile,” I told him.
“That’s a stupid town!” he said.
And that was all of our
conversation for several days.
On the practice field, things
didn’t start very well. I got the ball, but I ran the wrong way with it, and
everybody got angry and started shouting at me.
But Coach Bryant called me
across. “Just get in the line and start catching the bal,” he told me.
And then I told him something
that he didn’t want to hear.
“They never taught me to catch a
ball at high school,” I said.
“It was difficult enough for me
just to remember where our goal line ws.”
I don’t think he was very
pleased, but he started to teach me to catch.
I wanted My Mom, and I wanted to
go home. I didn’t like that place.
And Curtis was always angry, and I
couldn’t understand him. He had a car, and sometimes he gave me a ride to the
practice field. But one day when he had to change a wheel on the car, I helped
him.
“If you’re an idiot,” he said,
angrily, “how do you know how to do that?”
“Maybe I am an idiot,” I said,
“but I’m not stupid.”
Then Curtis ran after me, and
called me all kinds of terrible names.
After that, I moved my bed to
another room.
***
The first football game was on
Saturday. I ran well, and we won 35 to 3. Everybody was pleased with me. I
phoned Mom to tell her.
“I heard the game on the radio!”
she said. “I was so happy, I wanted to cry!”
That night, everybody went to
parties, but nobody asked me to go. I went back to my room, but I heard music
from somewhere upstrairs. I found a young man who was sitting in his room
playing the harmonica.
His name was Bubba. He broke his
foot in football practice and couldn’t play in the game. I sat and listened to
him. We didn’t talk, but after about an hour, I asked, “Can I try it?” and he
saik, “Ok,” and gave me the harmonica. I began to play.
After several minutes, Bubba was
getting really excited and saying, “Good, good, good!” Then he asked, “Where
did you learn to play like that?”
“I didn’t learn anywhere,” I
said.
When it got late, he told me to
take the harmonica with me, and I played it for a long time in my room.
Next day I took it back to Bubba.
“Keep it,” he said, “I’ve got
another one.”
I was really happy, and I went
and sat under a tree and played all day.
It was late afternoon when I
began to walk back to my room. Suddenly, I heard a voice shout, “Forrest!” I
turned round and saw Jenny!
She had a big smile on her face,
and she held my hand.
“I saw you play football
yesterday,” she said, “you were wonderful!”
She wasn’t angry about the
cinema, and she asked me to have a drink with her!
“I’m taking lessons in music, and
I want to be a singer,” she told me. “I play in a little group. We’re playing
at the Students’ Centre tomorrow night. Why don’t you come and lsiten?”
“Ok,” I said.
_to be continued
