Avani Joshi
Limelight for the oppressed
Avani Joshi was born to 2 mothers and one father, making her parents gay. She was a pretty and happy girl. When she first went to school, she kept a low profile for that exact reason. But a new talent grew in her: Physical Education. In the first grade, she picked up a baseball bat. It was marvelous for her! By day one, she excelled in the cricket pitch. A few days later, she was introduced to football, and she played like a professional at the very first moment! When she started basketball a week later, she was a star! She became a trendy popular girl with her sports skills and made lots of friends in school.
Only when she was in middle school did the problems start to emerge! She felt that everyone in the middle school would be mature enough to know about her, and Avani, now the most popular girl in school, made a mistake without thinking about the consequences she would face; she said that her parents were Gay!
At the very instant, people went to war with her! When the teachers weren’t looking, some students wrote words like ‘Illegal alien or ‘If Hitler were here, it would be good, as you would be dead!’. They threw plates at her in lunch, and if it didn’t hurt her, the students would punch poor Avani to the ground! She didn’t complain to the teachers; they would bully her even more if she did. The whole year went quietly; poor Avani couldn’t share her pain with anyone. The only thing that made her happy was playing sports.
In grade 7, the teachers changed, and they started treating her the same way as the students, as if she was malicious. Umpteen incidents occurred, for instance, “when a student would blame her for something that she didn’t do, and even if the teachers knew who it did, they would punish Avani only! And the students never used to call Avani by her real name. Instead, they used words like ‘YOU INCOMPETENT BRAT’ or ‘YOU HORRID ALIEN.” No teachers tried to stop this discrimination except the Physical Education teacher. He never showed any difference between any kid nor between any people.
She often told the PHYSICAL EDUCATION teacher about her problems, and he would tell the teachers of other classes to stop mistreating her, but this only made them treat her more badly! But with the PHYSICAL EDUCATION teacher’s encouragement, she became better and better at Physical Education, and Avani was added to the school team. He guided her to focus on one sport rather than using her energy in multiple sports. With the guidance of the PE teacher, she chose football, and she excelled in that sport the most. After about three months of vigorous practice and performing in different matches within the school, Avani was called upon for the school team. She would compete with another school, and her PE teacher encouraged and said to her, “Prove yourself; you are not less than anyone out there.”
With that encouragement, holding her willpower, she entered the court, but then she overheard a conversation with the opponent team girls.
“LGBT ALIEN,” one of them said, “We will do many penalties and make it look like it was her fault until she gets a red card and gets kicked out of the game!”
But this conversation made Avani more determined to win! At 10:35, the match began. At 10:53, Avani scored her first goal! By the end of the first quarter, the score was 6-7, with Avani’s team in the lead. At 11:08, the opponent team scored. By 12:04, Avani was about to take the ball from the opponent team and tried to the last score, but the opponent team tried to play an evil plot on Avani and made her get tripped. As the saying goes, “Good always wins over Evil.”, to everyone’s shock, Avani made her final goal and fell at the same time, which gave her a win.
This win made Avani and her PE teacher so famous and gave them opportunities to play in various inter-city games and eventually led them to get a place in the Olympics.
