Bruce

My name is Bruce and in 1996 I was a big kid. The kid who was always hungry but needed to be on a diet. But after the incident of 1996, I became something different. Let me explain.

The school I attended in 1996, Crunchem Hall Elementary school was run by the principal Ms. Trunchbull. She was a very mean-spirited person. I am not going to go into details of that as it has no part in this story other than the Chocolate Cake Incident of 1996. I had snuck to the bathroom and while I was in there, I felt hungry. I was not really hungry but I always wanted to eat. So I snuck into the kitchen and stole a piece of chocolate cake from the refrigerator. I had no idea it was Ms. Trunchbull’s. I am not sure if that would have persuaded me not to eat it, but it would have probably caused me to pause for a moment.

She found out somehow that it was me who had eaten the cake and sat me down in front of the entire assembly to embarrass me and make me eat a huge gigantic cake that had been made. When I first saw the cake, there was no way I was going to eat that entire thing, but Ms. Trunchbull yelled that now was leaving until I ate the entire confection. About three-fourths of the way into the cake, I felt like I was going to get sick. This is where everything changed. The assembly started cheering for me. I finished that cake and held that plate up like it was a trophy I had just been awarded. This made Ms. Trunchbull mad and she slammed the plate over my head. I then passed out and I don’t know if was the plate or the cake but I woke up two days later in what had to have been a cake coma. Way too much sugar.

But at that moment I realized I loved the cheer of the crowd. I wanted more of it and being the size guy I was I only knew one thing to do. Start playing football. I became the perfect guy to push the lines out of the way for the running back and. Keep the defense from running through our line. To hear the crowds cheer for me when we would make good plays kept my adrenaline up. And every time we would get into a situation the roar of the crowd would send me right back to that cake incident and I would remember how that crowd cheered me on to victory.

As I got into High School and then on to college I continued to love it. I put on way more muscle than fat and now I am six foot four, three hundred and fifteen pounds of muscle working the line. I do not know what happened to Ms. Trunchbull, but if I ever see her again I will have to thank her. While she didn’t know it at the time, she changed my life. I didn’t know it either but I would realize it later.

The other kids in that assembly hall when the cake incident happened still talk about that moment today, and every year we get together and talk about the memories from those days and how after Ms. Trunchbull left, everything got better. That roar of the crowd from that moment on has spurred me to become better and I love to entertain. I think after I finish playing football, I am going to start acting on stage. The first play I want to direct is a story based on our time at Crunchem Elementary. But I don’t want to be the center of the story just a part of it. Matilda was the real hero.