Playing Tetherball With A Seven Year Old

"Never, ever, ever, underestimate the power your words have." - Jeff Goins

The summer before seventh grade, I went to summer camp with my youth group. I had no former camp experience, I was almost completely without acquaintance, and it was an event I participated in more out of fear of missing out on something good than anticipation of something fabulous actually happening. In short, I was terrified. But I got to camp, things were going pretty well. I remember extremely vividly, on the second afternoon at camp during a large block of free time that I had long dreaded trying to fill playing tetherball with a boy in my grade and James David Stephens. James is a couple years older than me, but a truly outstanding person who just went out of his way to be nice. His social status was many levels above mine, he was friends with all the coolest people in youth and all the coolest people needed to hang out with him. But he was going out of his way to play tetherball with me and another awkward, insecure boy.

We played for a significant block of time. All were laughing, smiling, playing with friendly intensity, we were actually having a good time, something I wasn’t sure I was going to have while I was at camp. That was when the words were spoken. From twenty yards away or so, JD’s friends were doing something together and Aiden Barlow yelled at James: “James! Get over here and stop playing tetherball with a bunch of seven-year-0lds!”

His words cut like a knife. I’m sure he doesn’t remember saying it, he just wanted to hang out with James. But here was one of the best social exchanges I’d had in my year at youth group, a little shred of confidence and joy was building inside of me, I was allowing my heart to inflate just a bit, and with one offhand remark he popped it. Many potential social exchanges thereafter ended when I thought of those chilling words, that all I am is a seven-year-old in the social world.

During my seventh grade year, we had a brief softball unit. Softball is a maddening game because there are really only two types of people, people who know baseball and people who don’t. Those that know baseball are so annoyed with the people on their teams who don’t know what a force out is, or when a force out actually applies, who think they are safe when they are really out and get mad when people who understand the rules try to apply them fairly… it’s constant, and it couldn’t be much more annoying. I happen to be one of the people that understands baseball, and also, unfortunately for young Jenna, am extremely competitive.

I don’t remember the exact circumstances, to be honest I don’t even remember if Jenna was on my team or not, I just remember being irritated with people who neither understood the rules nor put in a decent effort. Jenna was doing something lacksadasically, not sliding into the base the right way or running hard enough or making an effort to get around me as the fielder, again I don’t remember, but I yelled:

“HURRY UP, JENNA, GET AROUND THE BASE!”

Frustrated and hurt she replied, “I’m trying,” meekly.

In foolish anger I retorted, “THEN TRY HARDER!”

I thought nothing of it. I was just annoyed with a softball game in middle school PE.

Last weekend, I was hanging out with Jenna and some other friends taking a walk, and there was an awkward quiet moment. Jenna, by the way, is the kind of human being who has eight hundred followers on Instagram, knows every teenage child in the state, and has actually been accepted by some modeling (what do you say, comapanies?) agencies/places. Needless to say, she’s way cooler than me. But we were hanging out, and in a quiet moment in the conversation she turned around and said these words that absolutely shocked me:

“Braxton, you hated me last year.”

Taken aback as to what I could possibly have done to make the popular child hate me, “I didn’t hate you.”

“Yeah you did. We were playing softball and…” she proceeded to recreate the entire scene.

Scaring words from me. I didn’t think I could have any influence on someone so high and mighty, but in an offhanded way that I’d completely forgotten about, I had said something she would never forget about. The same way it made me feel when I was called a “seven-year-old.”

Before I moved in Georgia, I did a little project to write some letters to people, letters telling people how they’d impacted my life and including some last words. There was a girl, we’ll call her Anna that I wrote a letter to. I want to be very careful here because her story is personal and I know that there are people receiving this email who knew her and maybe more about her story than she shared with me. But here is a girl who was pretty depressed with life and made offhand comments about it all the time. I had always assumed she was kidding when she said things like: “I’m just going to drop out and flip burgers…” I got upset sometimes with what I perceived to be as laziness and sometimes would tease her.

When I left at the end of December of 2017, I realized I didn’t know the full story and so I wrote her a letter telling her so, apologized for anything I might have said offhandedly, and left my contact information, telling her I was there for her on the off chance that half of what she complained of was actually true. The next day, I got a letter back from her with a gift card thanking me for what I said. The words she wrote I will cherish forever because they showed me what a small act of kindness can do. I don’t want to share her story, but turns out, this was a girl at the absolute end of herself who needed a friend and to be told that someone cared. I had no idea what was going on in her life and I couldn’t believe the way a few words I almost didn’t send had impacted her.

I tell three anecdotes to make this simple point: words matter. We all say things off handedly to people each and every day, and most of those words are forgotten. But the reality of the matter is that you don’t know the kind of day someone is having, you don’t ever know the full story, and what you say without thinking twice cuts to the bone. I’m sure you have memories of these things people have said to you that you will never forget, words that scared. But I was shocked to find out the power of my words had to do the same damage. The reality is, rarely does anyone want their words to hurt someone, but often they are destroying.

The whole point of this essay, without preaching, is watch your tongue. Our intentions are noble, but the words we say: poison. Everyone is different, everyone hears words differently, some people are more sensitive than others, sometimes it’s just situations, the point is you don’t know. So make sure your words are edifying and think about it. What you say in passing can change lives on a much bigger scale than the silly anecdotes I tell. Pay attention and speak carefully.