A Boy’s Life: Aidan Muchnicki

Aidan, a seventh-grader at Shore Middle School, lives with his parents in Mentor. He’s a multisport athlete, playing on football, baseball and basketball teams. He is following in his father’s footsteps, who played football for the Kent State Golden Flashes.

The hardest part of school is probably tests. You learn something, then you keep learning it, then you take a big test and it stresses on you for that part. We were taking the [Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers exam], and that’s a lot more stress now.

My biggest fear? I honestly hate insects. They’re just really ew, like spiders. And probably dying young. Because there are so many things in life that you can enjoy. Dying young means you probably never experienced most of the things that you will as you get older. There’s so many things you can do when you get older. That’s the biggest fear, you’ll never know what it feels like to do that.

It’s really tough to think about 10 years. In 10 years, you’d already be 22. I haven’t really thought about that yet, but I know that sometime I will have to think about it. All I know right now is that I can be a nice person, an honest person, reliable, trustful. I know that can help me toward the future, being what I want to be. — as told to Sheehan Hannan 

[Editor’s Note: As an extension of the “A Boy’s Life” feature in Cleveland Magazine’s March issue, we will be publishing additional boys' stories on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays throughout the month. For all these stories, click on the “A Boy's Life” tag.]