Cadet Officer Leadership

To no surprise, I am late to sign up for the Cadet Officer Leadership Program, just like everything else. After a year of the seniors battering me with the grand legacy of my brother Babatunde, an everlasting shadow that was believed I would forever suffocate under, I have been forced to sign up for a six day summer camp under the ROTC program, the Cadet Officer Leadership Program, aka COLP. Israel, a ninth grader drowning from the timidness of speaking to people, is being battered again for not applying to the Leadership Program on time. Oh, there was a preparatory academy for the camp? Although I ask this question, I lie to avoid being lectured and compared about the greatness of my brother again. Despite my super strategic step-ahead thinking,

the forbidden still occurs and I’m shooed to the academy.
I walk in, with my passionate-but-trapped heart sunken to the bottom of my soles, and a billion pairs of eyes with the penetration of a brick wall eyes stuck on my face. The more often the clunks of my Air Jordan 2s connect with the ground, the quieter the room gets. For once, my soul feels full. I am ready. I find a seat to cool down my newly freed inferno heart, and wait for the academy to commence.
The leader acknowledges my presence without opening his mouth. It goes on, me half knowing what’s occurring around me, and out of the exosphere, a man from the front utters my name, not with a deep voice, but a sharp, alerting, heavyweight sound, “Olu.” We all must present essay topics, one of which, I did not complete. Once my name is bellowed on his crust-infested lips, the redness of my heart quickly cools down, and my Air Jordans transform to eggshells in a millisecond while moving towards the podium. I begin speaking, not out of my mouth, but from a place that no one can break or alter, my soul. I end, feeling like I’m bench pressing 500 pounds when I’m really benching 95. My peer response is positive. In my small spectrum, never would I have believed that I could do something of this magnitude, and my overcoming of this moment further pushes my confidence to new challenges.