The First Time I Helped My Community I remember when me and a friend went and broke our barriers to help the community. I think the closest trait I have to Jackie Robinson is teamwork because during the time me and my friend worked together to help the community and we both did a great job. I believe that we both did a boatload of help towards our community and that we wished more people would try to do this.. If we could do this everyday, I think our area would be one of the cleanest in West Bloomfield, but that would just be too difficult.
This is my story about the first time me and my friend used one of Jackie Robinson’s traits and helped picked litter around our block and more. It was a foggy Saturday morning in March and I decided that I should go over to my friends house. I walked over and when I got there, he said that we should go around a pick up litter. I was more of an indoor person, but I still agreed and we left later that day to go and pick up all the trash. For our route we started at my friends house and went up Fieldbrook to Ogden. Then we went to Middleton and eventually would make a loop back to Turner.
We thought that this would give us the most space near our places to pick up as much litter as we could. So we got our trash bags, our gloves and the wagon to carry the bags, and we head off. We knew we had to work together to complete this and we knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but we did it anyway. We started out behind my friends house which has a small wooded area, and what we found back there was frightening. Tons and tons of cigarettes. It was terrible how many we found and we new exactly who was doing it.
It was their neighbors high school son who we had seen smoking out there at night. We went on to pick up all the cigarettes we found in the woods and it took about 30 minutes. It was awful that this happened and it had happened before. 2 times before that day we had to pick up cigarettes back their. This was a big problem not only for us, but for his health. Sadly, looking back then we never convinced him because he was so much bigger than us, now a days it seems pretty bad that we didn’t tell him that it was unhealthy.
We could have made a big change for his life, but instead we held back. We also didn’t have the greatest knowledge about cigarettes, so back then, which was a few years ago, we didn’t exactly know that it was so unhealthy. After that hard 30 minutes of work we continued to go on and help pick up litter on the road and along the side of the road. We ran into a problem though, our trash bags were getting pretty full. So we had to go back and get more trash bags for us as well as get more extra bags in case we almost fill up the trash bags again.
So while we were walking we crossed a trash can which looked like an animal or something had gotten into it. The trash can was knocked over and a ton of the trash was blowing around in the yard. So we went and we picked up all the things in their yard and put it into their trash can. It didn’t seem like anybody was home at the time, so we feel like they would be fine with what we did. So we continued on our journey to find more litter to pick up. While we were walking we had to watch out for cars that were passing us, and when they did we would veer off the road and into the yard we were next to.
The fog did not help either because we had to rely on our hearing to know when a car was coming. When we were walking we heard a car coming so we went off the road into the yard next to us. What happened next was unbelievable. The man in the driver’s seat rolled down his window slightly and tossed 2 wrappers out. We couldn’t believe our eyes, we just saw someone litter right in front of us as we were picking up litter. We quickly went and picked up the first wrapper, but we didn’t know where the second one went.
Then out of the corner of our eyes we saw it almost blow into the creek. My friend ran over there and grabbed it right before it fell in. This is exactly the kind of people we dislike the most and for this kind of moment exactly. We can’t understand why people can’t take the extra 1-10 minutes till they get home to throw it in a trash can. As we finished up our route we turned onto Turner ready to head back to his house when out of nowhere, we saw a bunch of litter in my own yard. Not to mention the pile of glass broken in the street.
So I went over to pick up the glass and when I went down to pick up the glass the sharp edge pierced my glove and sliced through my skin. I had cut myself pretty bad and my friend said I should run in and get it bandaged, but I told him I’d stay and pick up the glass and litter with him still. And couldn’t believe I cut myself on that piece of glass. I had picked up glass many times that say before this one, but of course the last piece of glass I try to pick up, I cut myself on it.
This was kind of unfortunate and I was in a lot of pain, but I kept going on so that we could get this over with quicker. I think another trait I had in common with Jackie Robinson is perseverance because after I had cut myself I still went on. I knew my friend couldn’t take all of the litter we collected home by himself so I helped him as much as I could even when I was in pain. After we took it all back and got rid of the litter, I quickly took my st From and hurried back home.
I did not want my cut to get infected, but if I didn’t get a bandage on it soon, there was no telling what would happen to it. My glove was beginning to have a red tint to it because of the blood. I didn’t usually do stuff like this and I didn’t usually stay and help for a long time. If I was on my own doing this I probably have been able to finish as fast as we did. And normally, if I cut myself I would call it a day and let him take the rest of it, but not today. I broke my barriers today and showed that I could still get things down even if I cut myself.
We really did a good job together and we finished faster than we could alone. Jackie Robinson really changed me as a person. I used to be an indoor person who would rarely leave the house, but because of the traits I learned from him, I enjoy going outside a lot. I run around outside, do sports, and me and my friend walk to school every morning. If it wasn’t for the traits from him, I would be inside play PS4 the whole day instead of getting outside and having fun. I used teamwork and perseverance just like Jackie did back in the day and it has really changed me as a person.
