Originally posted by Skydiver
lol
smoke and mirrors.
i never fit in with the 'cool kids' in school.
i don't do sports, i'm not outgoing and i was the geek with the glasses and braces reading a book in the corner
smoke and mirrors.
i never fit in with the 'cool kids' in school.
i don't do sports, i'm not outgoing and i was the geek with the glasses and braces reading a book in the corner
I was always really outgoing, and very lucky I guess, I always had a gaggle of friends. But I'll tell you a story - because this conversation reminded me of it. A lot of the kids that went to my junior school (when I was in grade 4 and 5) lived on the same street as me, or very nearby. We used to play a game called "kick the can" - which is like a combination of hide and seek and capture the flag, I suppose. When I was in grade five, I had friends from the grade four and five and six classes who'd all meet up with me outside my house, about thirteen or fourteen of us, to play KTC a few evenings a week, and on weekends.
Well, one day one of the "unpopular" girls from class was sitting out on her lawn (she lived three doors down), and in between games, my mother had come outside to water our lawn. She pulled me aside and said: "Why don't you ask that girl to play, too?"
I remember thinking - why would I want to do that?
But my mom said, "she's been watching you guys play for an hour, I think it'd be nice if you asked her to play too." That was my mom. She never "told me" to do things outright back then, she'd make suggestions, and for some reason I always felt BAD if I didn't take them, even as a kiddie. 
Well, I think I said something like: "We already have teams, there's no more players left." - to which my mother replied: "You can make new teams. If you ask her to play, the other kids will let her play too. And she'll feel included. And you'll feel good too because you did a nice thing for someone else."(I really didn't WANT to break up our teams because I loved the team I was on, but...) I said: "Ohhh-KAY." And I marched across the street, three doors down and up to her. I said, "hey, we're playing kick the can, you wanna play?" (It's funny I remember this so clearly, like it was yesterday). And she looked up at me, she had these HUGE blue eyes (I remember thinking, i wish MY eyes were that blue!), and she nodded, and said, "Sure. I'm Shauna."
I said: "Yeah, I know." (Well, I did, she was in my class - lol - but I guess because I never really talked to her, she figured I didn't know her name). Shauna came over to my driveway with me, I introduced her to the other guys and added her to my team (because she was new, we didn't count the extra player). And later, she found the most INCREDIBLE place for me and her to hide behind this one house, near their backyard gate. She was really good at finding hiding places.
Next day at school, I called her over to eat lunch with us in the gym. And she sat down, and my best friend (at the time) started talking with her as though she'd always been part of our group and, I remember feeling like ... this is neat. Yesterday, she was uncool, and today she's friends with my friends, and my mom was right, I DID feel really good about that (as hallmarky as that might sound
). I decided (in my grade five head) right then and there that I was never going to NOT talk to anyone because they were supposedly "uncool" again. And I'm proud to say I kept that vow, all through the rest of middle school and highschool.
I was blessed with many friends, and Shauna remains one of my best friends, even today (though she lives in New York now with her husband and daughter).
Kid politics, huh? I figure I had an epiphany in grade five, and I think it made me a better person. I have to thank my mom for that (among so many other things she taught me). That's why she's getting a Valentine from me this year (as she does every year), too!
mini(the slightly nostalgic)geek
EDIT-> I might add that Shauna taught me how to climb trees! She was scary good at that. But I taught her how to pile up and then excavate a proper snow fort. So I think it was a fair trade.
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