A life lesson | Teen Ink

A life lesson

August 24, 2020
By DanielleEstes, Queen Creek, Arizona
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DanielleEstes, Queen Creek, Arizona
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Author's note:

It is personal but true.

Have you ever had that friend that you trusted everything with? Or that friend that you could tell anything to? Well, I did  when I was in elementary school. My parents told me that my best friend was not a very nice girl. They said that she wasn't my friend. I chose to ignore my parents and ended up getting myself in serious trouble. "He who walks in the company of fools suffers a long way; company with fools, as with an enemy, is always painful, company with the wise is pleasure, like meeting with kinsfolk" (The Dhammapada), is something my parents always told my, but in different words. Always I chose to not listen.


I was having one of those bad days, and I didn't want to deal with anyone. I was in 6th grade with my best friend, Seaira. We never really hung out together outside of school. We had a rule at my house against it, so we only knew each other from the way we acted at school and not at home. To me, she seemed like the best person in the world.

We were always together ever since preschool. Neither of us had very nice homes, so there was no controversy about wealth between us. The only thing that was different between us was that she had a phone and tablet and I did not. My parents had always been against children having any electronics until they were at least twelve, but even then we had to have A's and B's throughout the whole school year before we could get any form of electronics. Between Seaira and I, we had always kept each other's secrets, even if it was something serious enough that we should have told an adult; or so I thought.


She had been acting very rude and distant towards me this school year and I guess that it was because she had a new friend. Her new friend lived better off than I did and they were able to hang out together after school. So clearly they had a better understanding of each other's personalities based on if they were at home or school. They hadn't fully pushed me out of the group yet, but they were getting there. So today I had finally had enough of being slowly pushed away.


I was in the process of cleaning out my desk pocket while she sat there and watched. I had just pulled out my lunch from yesterday. Seaira's first reaction was to start making faces and saying "Eww, that's disgusting!" or "I'm telling the teacher on you!".

I had already been angry and these comments made me even angrier. So I got up to through my lunch away, but instead of going back to my desk, I walked out of the classroom and sat by the door. I thought "Oh it's no big deal, I'm just sitting by the door, it's not like I went somewhere else". I guess it was a big deal because two-three minutes later my teacher walked out of the classroom.


When she walked out she started getting mad at me. After a few minutes of yelling at me she said "I'm taking you to the principal's office." She told me to gather my belongings and to follow her to the front office. I did not know this at first, but Seaira told my teacher that I had a knife in my purse. Which, yeah, I will admit it I did have one in my purse, but I did not know it was there. 

I guess she saw it at lunchtime when I was getting a pencil out.


I had never thought that, of all people, my best friend would get me in this much trouble because I made her mad. And because of this, I ended up getting ISS (In-School-Suspension). So because I had a knife at school I could not even ride the bus, therefore I never got to ask her why she did it.


Even after I was allowed to ride the bus Seaira still tried acting like she never did anything wrong and acted like we were still friends. But what she did not know was that because of her and the principal, I was going to transfer to a different school.


 For some odd reason, the principal hated my family. It was not like we had done anything to her. When I got to her office and the door was closed, she started screaming and yelling at me. Eventually, my Dad came, and after all of us talking and yelling, the principal told him that I would get it back.


When we got in my Dad's truck, he told me to get the knife out. So when he asked me to get it out and when I told him it wasn't there he told me " you better not be lying, because if your not then I'm about to go make a scene in there."  It did not help that he was angry that the principal yelled at him.


My sister was in the truck as well, so we both dumped my bag out. Low and behold, it was not in there. But lucky for us, my dad did not go back inside.


Now that I look back on all of this, if I had listened to my parents, then I never would have gotten into that situation. I still do not listen to everything they say, but I do listen to some of what they say. The quote "He who walks in the company of fools suffers a long way; company with fools, as with an enemy, is always painful, company with the wise is pleasure, like meeting with kinsfolk" (The Dhammapada) will always be a reminder of the lesson that I learned that day. This quote taught me that you never really know someone until you have seen their bad side. And that my parents and sisters have always been the best and only people that I can trust with anything.



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