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My First Friend at F.G.L.
I was in third grade and the playground was my
battlefield. The battlefield of life anyway, for anything and everything that
happened with my friends, which at the time was anything of importance,
occurred there. In a bunch of warped, twisted, constructed pieces of wood and metal,
I entered the myopic world of children. However, I had the disadvantage of
being a new kid. Unlike everyone else, I had no friends to play with, and it
was lonely—until the day she became my first friend.
At eight years old I was still not yet
ready for properly dealing with the social nuances that comes with, well,
people. My emotional sensitivity was hyper; I cried often, and was always nice
because I could not handle disapproval or, worse, rejection. Due to this, my
first friend seemed to be often mean and/or dramatic. Seeing as I had no one
else, I ignored these bad qualities. She had me by the fear of being alone,
especially since outside the academic realm, I was a follower, not outgoing or
pushy.
In January of that year, another new
girl came to our school. The first time I saw her was at recess. We were inside
the gym, most likely due to inclement weather, when I saw her sitting all alone
on puffy blue and white gymnast pads stacked up against the wall.
I may not have been outgoing, but she
was a kindred spirit, a fellow new girl. I thought I could not only gain a new
friend the easy way but also help out a forlorn looking girl.
“Hi!” I exclaim jovially, after walking
over to her.
The new girl looks up at me, replying
with a simple, “Hey.”
“Can I sit here?” I ask, pointing to a
spot next to her on the mat.
“Sure, no one’s sitting there.” I continue
to plop down, kicking my legs.
“What’s your name?”
“Cindy. Cindy isn’t short for Cynthia by
the way, my name is just Cindy.”
“My name’s Emma. You just move here?”
“Yea.”
“That’s cool. I hope we can be friends.”
“That’d be nice.” Thus, our friendship
began.
When I found out she was also in Mrs.
Sweets' class, I was excited to have more time to spend with her. I was
unprepared however, to find her at my bus stop the next morning. I was
ecstatic. I ran past my mom who still walked me down to the bus stop, yelling,
“CINDY!” Cindy turned around only to be
bombarded by a gigantic hug from moi. When Cindy realized it was me, we both
squealed with the delight of having a best friend who lived so close by.
My first friend and I welcomed Cindy
into our small group with open arms. As the year wore on, however, Cindy and I
became discontented with my first friend. She talked badly about me behind my
back with Cindy, who felt uncomfortable and didn’t know what to say. She called
me a crybaby, which hurt even more because it was true. She got possessive if I
hadn’t told her I wasn’t going to hang out with her that day. She just wasn’t
fun to be around anymore.
Yet, when we transitioned from third to
fourth graders, she, Cindy, and I were all still friends. I’m not really
entirely sure why. The bad kept on piling up, by far out weighing the good.
Like the time Cindy was absent. She and
I were playing alone on the big, adult, dark blue monkey bars. She was easily
able to skip a bar as she glided to the other side. She wanted me to do the
same but I couldn’t, I was paralyzed by the fear of falling. However, I was
also afraid of her wrath, so I tried to skip bars. Even though I wanted to
please her, the fear of falling reared its giant ugly head, strong as
ever. I voiced the beast when I was a
bar or two across,
“I don’t want to, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. Just do it!”
“I can’t. I’m scared.”
“I did it, so you can too. Go on, Emma,
it’s easy. Just reach with your hand, and grab the second bar in front of you.”
“Urgh-” I didn’t try very hard, my fear was
too great. I ended up just letting go, falling safely to the ground. Even after
I jumped down she made me get back up and try again. She wouldn’t accept that I
was too afraid. In reality, she probably had good-intentions with a bad
follow-through. My younger self just couldn’t
see it that way. I was upset that she was making me do this. I thought I had been
wronged. My thinking was, if she was really my friend, she wouldn’t have made
me do something I was so scared of. It felt like I was being bullied.
For many months of our fourth grade
year, Cindy and I complained about her behind her back. We agreed that she
wasn’t a good friend, so we should break away. That way we could achieve
complete friendship happiness.
One day in April, we finally put our
words into actions. Cindy and I loved to play games of the imagination. One of
them was the “pirate game”. We played on top of the tower in the playground
that held the typical pirate ship wheel. Cindy was the cook, I was a crew
member and my first friend was whatever she wanted. We gathered coconuts from
the blue monkey bars. However, we played this game infrequently because for
whatever reason, she hated the game. I believe she even once called it stupid.
So, when Cindy and I broke away, after getting into a big fight with her, we
decided to play the game we could never play when she was around.
“Wanna play the pirate game?” I ask
grinning from ear to ear.
“Ok! But let’s mix it up a bit.”
“How?” I wonder, curious to know what
Cindy means.
“It’s the pirate game, but we found an
island and now we are stuck there.”
“Ok! Let’s go!” Cindy and I giddily ran
over to the grass behind the swings, using the flat protruding rock as our safe
haven in a mysterious jungle.
Yet she was still there, walking up and
down the gravel on the other side of the swing set. She seemed to be a dog with
an old bone; she wouldn't let go, but we simply ignored her. That was when she
brought in her other friend, Dana, to help play the messenger. That was
possibly the best decision she could have ever made. Dana came over to us,
asking what we were doing because my first friend wanted to know. We told Dana
about the pirate on land game, which Dana told her about. Next thing Cindy and
I know, Dana is back asking if she can play with us. We gladly said yes.
From then on, Dana, Cindy, and I were
inseparable. They are the best friends anyone could ask for. To this day we are still three peas in a pod.
The three musketeers who know each other like the back of our hands. Our
friendship is so strong and formidable, we made up an acronym just for us:
B.B.S.G. I would tell you what it stands for, but then you would have to go
through an initiation procedure that I just don't think you're ready for.
In the end, my first friend at F.G.L was
inconsequential, yet instrumental. Maybe, I'll even thank her one day.
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