By Andrew Roth
Eighth grade
If you look at any photo album of me when I was a baby, you will notice that I always had a ball in my hand. A baseball. A small basketball. A mini soccer ball. It didn't matter. I just had to have a ball. From early on in my childhood, my family was convinced I would love sports and that was the kind of kid I was going to be. They were right. But what they didn’t know is that the ball was going to teach me something other than sports. The ball was going to teach me an important life lesson.
Just after my fifth birthday, my family moved to China. We sold our house in Boston and shipped all of our belongings and lives to Shanghai. A week later, I was on a school bus all by myself headed for kindergarten at a Chinese school called Soong Ching Ling.
Everything about my life in China was so different. Instead of beginning the school day with a warm handshake from our head of school, I began each day at Soong Ching Ling with a thermometer pressed against my forehead to ensure I didn’t have a fever, and my palms were checked for hand, foot, and mouth disease. When I wasn’t prepared for my violin lessons, my teacher would hit my hands with the bow.
There were as many bikes on the road as cars. Traffic was crazy. Instead of our garbage being picked up by specially outfitted garbage trucks like in America, our garbage pickup was a man on a bike with a large cart trailing behind him.
Instead of getting our groceries at a supermarket, we did our daily shopping at the wet market across the road. A wet market is where all fresh food is sold in China. Each time a customer selects a chicken or fish, the stall keeper cuts off the live animal’s head with a knife and then hoses down the floor to wash away the blood. The floors are always wet, therefore giving it the name Wet Market.
In Shanghai, I lived in a compound, which is a gated community with approximately 100 identical houses. Inside the compound there were lots of places to play—courts for tennis and basketball, playgrounds, and a soccer field. In the compound I had friends from Lebanon, Sweden, the Netherlands, China, Italy, Malaysia, France, and Korea.
Because all the kids were from different countries, there was no common language. That made it very hard to speak with one another. We not only spoke different languages, we also came from families with vastly different customs and life experiences.
All of this could have made it very difficult for us to connect and become friends; however, we all knew how to play with a ball. This hollow sphere, which can be kicked, pitched, thrown, or batted, was the attraction that brought us all together.
Sometimes I would go over to kids’ houses who didn’t speak a word of English and show them I had a ball in my hand. Without me saying a word, they would quickly put on their shoes and run outside, and we would either throw or kick a ball with each other. In no time we would be laughing, chasing each other, or rooting someone else on.
We all loved playing ball, and this became our language. It was how we came together almost every day and how we quickly connected when a new family moved into the neighborhood.
One time when my grandparents were visiting from America, we traveled to a small town called Nan Xun just outside of Shanghai. We spent part of the visit with a community service group in China. The group brought us along to see one of the families in need whom they were helping out. The family consisted of two elderly grandparents, a granddaughter, and a dad who was locked up in the cellar. He had been confined in the cellar for years because he suffered from mental illness, and in China, there are no hospitals for these kinds of patients. Desperate families are left to take care of their own.
The girl, who was about my age, had been raised by her grandparents because her mom had run away soon after she was born, and she had never seen her dad since he was locked away. The family lived in a tiny two-room stone structure that had no heat, and they cooked their meals over a fire pit.
When we arrived, the grandparents greeted us with warm smiles and invited the adults inside. My sisters wandered off down the road a bit to explore, and I was left standing on the dirt driveway with the granddaughter. I was feeling uncomfortable at that moment. We didn’t have anything to talk about and, in fact, no way to say it. I had learned quite a bit of Mandarin by this time, but the granddaughter spoke in a regional dialect that I couldn’t understand.
Fortunately, I had brought a ball with me that day. As soon as I took it out of the car, the girl’s eyes lit up and we started to toss the ball around. We played catch and kicked the ball for a while. As time went on there were smiles, more smiles, and even some laughter.
On first meeting the granddaughter, I didn’t think we had anything in common. In fact, I felt kind of frightened and subdued by her sad and difficult circumstances. But as I drove away with my family when our visit ended, I was filled with the good feelings I get when I’ve been able to connect with someone unexpectedly.
Without the ball I never would have connected with so many different kinds of kids while living in Shanghai. I don’t even remember if I ever had a full conversation with some of the kids I knew, but we still played ball together every day and grew to enjoy each other, be interested in each other, and care about our unusual friendships. In Shanghai, the ball was the bridge that I used to overcome so many obstacles, including language and culture.
Looking back, what I learned from the ball is that you can always find points of connection with other people. At times you may have to look hard and be creative or even unconventional in finding that bridge to connecting, but in the end, the best bridge of all may be something as simple as a ball.