After reading an assortment of college personal essays, a shudderingly well written poem by Silvia Plath, and creating our own poem, trying to emulate the stylistic devices of a legend, I faced the task of having to write my own personal essay. Daunting as it was, coming up with an image, on which I would base my essay was the easy part. Bringing the image to life however, proved to be a difficult process. Below is my essay, please enjoy.
The Resilience of Leather
The soccer cleat is no ordinary shoe. Draped in white zig-zag stripes, its body of black leather is transformative. While it maintains its own shape, it also has the ability to form, to mold, and to adapt to its owner's--to my needs, like an actor on a callback. The cleat is no ordinary shoe, and its stage, no ordinary race track or sidewalk. I'll leave it to pumps or Nikes when it comes to showing off, but the cleat knows how to get a job done. Weightless, it seems to fly across the field, back and forth, to and fro, no matter the endurance of the runner. Its strong body moves swiftly from one goal post to the other as it makes perfect contact with the ball, and if one listens closely, it's almost possible to hear a faint tap as the shoe
hits the ball.
But the job is not finished and amongst the brisk wind, cold air, and unwitting crowd, the cleat triumphs. Right now though, the only enemy is the grass. Green and fertile, there's no escaping the tangle of slippery weeds. And although the scent is something to stop for, the cleat must remember that its spikes are not there for good looks or fun, but to grab hold of the dirt and push off as if it were a boat leaving the dock: unfailingly independant.
While the amazing shoe remains nothing less than a mechanism for championship itself, victory does not come so easily to the bearer or to me. Often times the cleat clings to my foot, like a child to its mother, like the beach to a warm summer day. Between tiny hand stitched panels and large, obstructive plastic pieces, the cleat is also there to teach a lesson. While it may leave the field with no more than a few grass stains, my feet come out feeling deterred and rubbed raw. Blisters and calluses cover identical spots and are the prices paid for 90 minutes of glory. But the hurt doesn't last long because the foot is no longer delicate, but strong and withered, an object that has experienced life.
Life lessons are not only instilled upon the young by the old, but by the inbetweeners, the teenagers onto parents or the other way around. Sometimes, these life lessons are taught to ourselves. The cleat can run back to a time when it was not a mode of transportation or a vessel on a weightless race--riddled with bumps and cracks--but a mere bystander. And it was me, in a classroom, at a desk, well rested and mesmerized by the teacher's instructions. Surveying the room, taking in the tired youngsters, something the teacher said had caught the students' attention. A presentation just for girls had a boy cracking jokes about his peer--about me. It elicited laughter from some, and was close to eliciting tears from myself. But people were watching and I was better than giving what the foolish boy had wanted, so I instead laced up the nylon casings of my weathered tear ducts and sat at attention. This life lesson in particular made it so that by the next game, putting on those cleats wouldn't ache so much, and running wouldn't strain so much. That next game the sky, this time a bright, clear blue would support the sun in a high contrast of colors, while the wind, a bit softer, made it easy for the black and white and nylon and leather to carry all the way through.