I was in elementary school, and in 3rd grade, I was about 8 years old. There was a new student in our class. To the majority of my classmates she was kinda weird. Her hair was extremely greasy as well as tangled from a lack of brushing. It seemed as though the word “shower” was all but familiar. Because of this she had a strange musty smell to her. It was BAD! My teacher walked her into our classroom and gave a little introduction about her, and then explained the basics on how things worked in our room. Eventually my teacher announced that it was “break time”. As a third grader “break time”, took the place of “centers”, which was a time to play. Now it was a fifteen-twenty minute time frame for a snack, with much needed socializing. Everyone of course rushed to grab their snacks and I was amongst them. This girl, being new, didn’t know about this “break time”, and remained at her desk, which was newly assigned to her, in the back of the class. As me, and the rest of the students, milled around the room, eating, and talking with our friends. Probably about who should be the captains during our kickball game today at recess. I happened to glance in “the new girls” general direction, and saw her sitting at her desk, hunched over with her head on her desk. I didn’t know why, but I felt horrible. Of course at that moment some of my friends began talking about “new girl”. That being what they called her. I started to feel really sorry for her, and thats when I decided, why not be the nice person, and simply talk to her. I slowly walked over to her desk and the desk next to her, while feeling the whole classes eyes following me, and I sat down. Quietly, almost a whisper I said “Hi”, she looked up surprised, she met my gaze and said even quieter “Hello”. Eyes watched carefully to every single movement, and ears all around strained to try and hear our conversation.
“so whats your name?” I asked with the most, biggest, friendliest smile possible.
“um… sarah” she said, with a small quick smile.
“well mines madeline, but people call me maddy, mads, m.g, gracie girl, and well… madeline”. I said with another big proud smile. I was always very fond of all my nicknames.
“Hi” said sarah, now thankfully a real smile. To this we both started laughing. We laughed until our stomachs hurt, and by then I had shared my goldfish. We ended up starting a competition on who could catch the most goldfish in our mouths, after tossing them as high as we could in the air. Once all the goldfish had either successfully been consumed or thrown away, from landing on the floor instead of our our mouths, we continued to talk. Between the two of us we probably asked about a bazillion questions. Whether it was about where sarah had moved from or where she lives now, or what was my favorite color, and did I have any pets. By this point three of four of my friends had joined in on our conversations. They began making their own introductions to sarah one by one. Eventually, my teacher announced that “break time” was over, and that it was time to get moving again with todays lesson. On my way back to my seat, I invited sarah to sit with me at lunch, to which she said yes, and we both got super excited and giddy. While I was sitting in my class in my seat, and thought about everything that had happened within, about the last half-hour, I knew had done the right thing, I stepped up, and made sarah feel welcome, when nobody else would. By doing so I had also made a really great friend.