Memoirs of a Shuttlecock

Badminton, a game of skill, mentality, and cruelty to shuttlecocks, including me. At least that was what I heard. The rules of badminton stated that you must hit the SHUTTLECOCK at your opponent’s side and not get it out of the boundary lines. If your opponent missed a shuttlecock, then you would win a point. These humans were tricky, though. They hit us with a racket.

Then came the dreadful day: the Olympics. A man opened the tube that I was sleeping in and shook me out. The world became too bright. Somebody grabbed on to me.

“Ow!” I yelled.

The man’s face was full of concentration. He positioned me in front of his racket.

The pure desperation to not be decapitated by this man’s merciless racket brought me the one thing that I needed the most: hope. My hope, however, did not last long like I desired it to. The racket swung at me, hitting me in the cheek. A feather crumbled down, falling onto the green floor. Before I could process what had just happened, another racket slapped me.

“Would you quit it?” I screamed. Sometimes, I wondered if humans were deaf. Whenever the burning sensation of a racket attacking me came to my head again, I knew they were. Another racket hit me, sending me plummeting to the floor. The opponent rushed toward me and bumped me up.

Oh no! Once you got hit up, the opponent would go on a full-blown attack. Slam! The racket smacked me like an iceberg. The world gasped around me. A sharp pain whacked me. I got closer to the ground. I could see the opponent rushing toward me, trying to reach me with all his might. He extended his racket but missed me by an inch. The crowd roared, fiercer than a lion.

A man dressed in all black picked me up and put me in the retired shuttlecock section. One point gained, and one shuttlecock retired.