A Separate Peace Chapter 3

Badminton. The beach Gene and Finny went to.

"Yes, Finny had practically saved my life" (25). But he also almost cost me my life. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't have even been in that tree. The Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session was a big success, right from the start. Finny and I were the Charter Members, and like I said before, we had to open every meeting by jumping from the tree ourselves. It was the first of many rules that Finny created. Despite the fact that I jump with him, without hesitation, I hated it. Each meeting we had, the limb seemed higher, thinner, scarier. But I would never have not jumped. If I didn't, I knew Finny would give me an earful of his rules. We were a club. "Clubs by definition met regularly; we met every night. Nothing could be more regular than that" (26). We started skipping classes, meals, and Chapel. Finny made his own rules that he listened to. They sounded in the form of Commandments. For example, "Never say you are five feet nine when you are five feet eight and a half" and "Always say some prayers at night because it might turn out that there is a God." His most urgent rule was "You always win at sports" (26). That meant everyone. You could never lose. It was the fun of the game. You always win, even if you're down by 15 points in the last 10 seconds of the game, you still won. Finny hated Devon's summer athletic program. He didn't like tennis, swimming, softball, and badminton. Especially badminton. So Finny invented 'blitzball'. Blitzball was played with a medicine ball, which is really heavy. Finny made it so that the ball was always in my hands. There aren't any teams in blitzball, so everyone was on their own. We played this game numerous times to keep us entertained.

I remember one day when Finny broke the school swimming record. The record was originally held by A. Hopkins Parker. Finny just wanted to see if he could beat him, and he did. He beat him by .7 seconds. Nobody else knows that Finny beat the record. For some reason, Finny doesn't like holding school records and having people make a big deal about it.

Later, we went to the beach, which was a lot of fun. "We had dinner at a hot dog stand" (39). Finny wanted to make sure that I had a good time, like it was his job to make me have fun. He called me his best pal, which was courageous to say, especially when you go to the Devon School. I was going to say it back, "but something held me back" (40). Maybe I didn't think Finny was my best pal. But that's ridiculous, isn't it?