In a town inside of the dictionary, there live words. Words who think just like you and me, but they all act according to their definitions. One young word was faster and more energetic than the rest. He never felt in his place. His name was Kinetic. 

Kinetic had the same routine every day, like all the other words did. He would brush his teeth, but he did it as fast as he could. He would eat breakfast, but he did it while running around the kitchen. Kinetic would even play basketball while he drove to work. Work was boring to Kinetic. He wanted to skydive. He wanted to get outside, run thirty miles, and then jump into the ocean. Sadly, he couldn’t do any of these things: he was too busy working. When Kinetic was just a couple of letters old, he had dreamed of being the word athlete. He practiced the definition of athlete every day so that when one was needed he could be there. Other little letters wanted to grow up to be lavish, so they could live a life of wealth and luxuriance. Kinetic didn’t want to be like the others, though; he had bigger dreams. Kinetic thought if he paid homage to the athletes now that they would be accepting of him. He wanted them to accept him because he thought then he could be one of them. He spoke with brevity when he was with the Athletes to seem smarter and more ready to go to the Athlete Center. The Athlete Center had concentric roads running parallel in circles away from the center. Kinetic would pass it every day he went to grammar school. 

One day when Kinetic was running to school, as usual, he ran too fast and didn’t see the crossing light. The cars tried to slow down, but they couldn’t, and then BANG! Kinetic was thirty feet away on the ground, knocked out. When he woke up in the hospital, he saw a cornucopia of doctors who were giving him strange, sad looks. When he asked what was going on, one of the doctors named Doctor told him that he had been hit by a car and may never walk again. Kinetic was dumbfounded. He was supposed to be an athlete, not anything else. “I’m going to be an athlete no matter what the doctors say,” he kept telling himself each night. So, every day, he put his feet on the floor and tried to walk. He fell down over and over again, but every day he got back up and tried again. He was determined to be able to walk. 

One day, he got up and was able to stand for a few seconds. “Hooray” he shouted. Each day he was able to stand up longer and walk farther. He became more and more like himself. He was ecstatic. When he was able to walk again, the doctors were amazed and asked him how he had done it. He answered, “I was able to do it because I know who I am and who I’m going to be. I’m Kinetic and that’s the way I’ll stay.”

The End