Slot Machine In the Slot Machine there are three main characters, Elvin, Mike, and Frank. Elvin is the main character in the story. He's an overweight kid who doesn't have much of a self-esteem and hates any physical activities. Mike is Elvin's best friend, or as Elvin calls him, friend 1. Then there is Frank. He is also a friend of Elvin's, or as Elvin says it, friend 1-A. Frank wants to be the king of his school and hopes that he can get there somehow where he is going.
It starts out with them all on a bus. Elvin, Mike, and Frank are sent of to a camp. There they will spend twenty-one nights with the Knights. The Knights is an all boys camp that will prepare them for the journey into high school. While staying there they are destined to find their "slot" that they belong in and carry it throughout their lives.
English: V Elvin Ltd
Русский: футболист Эльвин М...
Русский: Elvin AliyevElvin hates this slot idea so he decides right there on the bus that he hates the camp.
When they get to the camp, they go to there assigned cabins. Elvin and Frank are together in the same cabin and Mike is separated in another cabin. Then they all go to the leader of the place; they call him Brother Jackson. Everybody was assigned a "slot" that they would go to every day. Frank got, according to Elvin, the best sport in the world because you don't have to work very hard, golf. Mike got basketball. It fitted him because he was a natural at basketball, along with every single thing else. And Elvin got the dreaded FOOTBALL. He got this slot because it was where all the "big" kids went when they have no talent.
Elvin's plan was to sit on the bench for the whole three weeks that he was at the camp. But that wasn't how it was at this camp. Everybody played and if you wanted to quit they pushed you even harder. So Elvin was forced to be a lineman. He couldn't stand his ground and kept getting injured, so he spent the rest of the day in sick bay, or the nurses office.
Then Elvin switched to a baseball slot. He thought that it would be easy to sit on the bench when they were in the outfield and when they were up to bat he would just take his strikes, but the coaches saw that he would be nice for a catcher. Elvin couldn't catch a ball if his life depended on. He couldn't even get down in the catcher squat without tipping over. So he was taken aside and somebody trough baseballs at him for hours until he at least was able to stop the ball. But one of those balls bounced off the ground and nailed him right in the jaw when he turned away from it. So he went back to sick bay.
In the mean time, Frank was getting mixed up with a group of older kids called the O's. They were called that because the leaders were Obie and Opie. They were making him do humiliating stuff like run through the cafeteria naked, getting him drunk and stuff like that. The point of all this was to initiate Frank into the cool group, so he can be king.
This time it was wrestling. Right of the bat Elvin liked this slot. He had seen it on TV and he thought he knew everything about it. So the coach set him up with another wrestler and they started wrestling. Elvin head butted, kicked, punched, and strangled his opponent, almost killing the other kid. It turned out that he had a lot to learn about the real wrestling. When he found out what the real wrestling was he didn't like it and plus he couldn't ever pin anybody, but he didn't switch slots because he learned to like wrestling for the challenge. For once, in his whole two days that he was there, he liked something. So he kept trying and practicing and reading up on the subject. Well one day, the coach came up to him and said that he was off the team because Elvin couldn't even pin the featherweight wrestler and there was nobody else that he might be able to pin. Elvin really liked this wrestling slot and he told Frank and Mike that he was good at it so he had to lie. He said that he quit because he was too embarrassed to tell them that he was kicked out of the slot.
So back to Brother Jackson for reassignment. He was then put into the golf slot. Elvin was so happy that he got that slot, plus he would be in there with Frank. So he goes to the golf course to his group. But it wasn't what he thought it was all cracked up to be. He had to carry all the bags around and the counselors that made Frank do all that bad stuff made Elvin drink four beers. So Elvin got drunk, through up all over and went to sick bay for the rest of the day.
His next slot was the religious slot. He was forced to go to this slot because he was caught drinking. He couldn't get out of this slot unless he was kicked out, which gave him a plan. Elvin goofed off by making sick jokes and insulting the teacher and his class so the teacher kicked him out. It was a new record for Elvin, ten minutes in a slot. He was pretty proud of himself, until the letter was sent to his mom about what he did.
So the next slot he went to was an art slot. He liked this slot because there were no physical activities, no kids picking on him, and he finally felt free. In his class were all the kids he saw in sick bay. This is where they all ended up. So Elvin spent the rest of the week at the art slot, not doing anything, but just looking around at other people projects.
Then came the last day of camp. Elvin was glad to be getting home, Mike was Mike, the natural at everything, and Frank did what he had to do there, he was king.
The moral of the story is you are in control of your own destiny. Elvin was supposed to go to that camp and like every bit of it, but he just would refuse to like his slot and he came out disliking it as much as when he came in.