Kid Picked Last in Kickball Secretly Had Training Montage for this Moment

From zero to zero just like that

By: Grant Yang

January 11, 2022

During the most recent monthly kickball tournament at Houston’s Salt Middle School, the last player picked was as per usual 7th grader Franklin Lu. Branded as the “loser of 7th grade” and “skinniest legs south of Oklahoma,” Franklin had long grown accustomed to the jeers and teasing of his classmates. Unbeknownst to other students of 5th period P.E. however, Franklin knew that this time would be different—he had performed an entire training montage just minutes before.

Just 5 minutes earlier, Franklin had been his normal, concave self with osteoporotic shins. However, while walking down an alleyway at night, he ran into an old Chinese man performing tai chi, seemingly helpless at first but then quickly knocking out the drunkards challenging him to a fight and the 17 ninjas dispatched to assassinate him. In the next minute, the old Chinese man, who introduced himself as Master Chu, refused to take on Franklin as a student but then agreed when Franklin’s tiny ankles reminded him of his consumptive mother’s last words before being executed in the fall of the Qing Dynasty: “Love is other people.”

For the next three minutes, Franklin teleported between various dark basements punching a rice sack suspended from the ceiling that gradually grew bigger. Interspersed between these episodes, Franklin climbed up a mountain using only two chopsticks while the trees around him transitioned from spring to summer to winter and back to spring. After simultaneously reaching the summit of the mountain and knocking the largest rice sack off its chain, Franklin’s body rippled with muscle and he was teleported back to Salt Middle School’s kickball diamond.

Ignoring the laughs and comments of the other team, Franklin stepped up to the kicking plate, determined to prove all of them wrong. As the pitch neared his legs, Franklin let out a dramatic kick that released all the emotions and struggle that culminated from the previous five minutes, sending the ball rocketing through the sky. The pitcher caught it.