All My Firsts

Chapter 5: Old Friends

I caught myself after hearing her calling my name a few times. "Georgeanna? That's really you?"

"The one and only girl."

"Oh my God! I never thought I'd hear from you again!"

"That's the thing about great moms and great friendships, they work amazing together in tracking down the lost friend, haha."

I heard her laugh and I was brought back to how I had met her.

Flashback

I was crying yet again when a girl had pushed me off of the swingset at recess - keep in mind that for kids this is a big thing and they get really hurt by it - and she had walked up to me. "Hey, what's the matter, what happened?"

"It's nothing, don't worry."

"But you're crying, so it has to be something."

"Well, Rebecca came over and pushed me off the swingset because she couldn't wait for the ten minutes that I got the swing. But I don't care, she can have it." I really didn't want to give up the swingset, it was my favorite part of the playground. But it wasn't like I was getting it back any time soon. Or at all for this recess. She didn't care about the ten minutes rule and followed it even less. I wasn't getting it back until tomorrow.

"But your ten minutes weren't up yet."

"Sure they were, I'm not on the swing anymore right?"

"But I saw you, you've only been on for like, three minutes."

"It's fine, I'll just get back on tomorrow."

"No, we came up with that ten minute rule so everyone could get a chance on the swings."

That's when she walked over right next to the swing that Rebecca was on and waited for a second. After a few swings from Rebecca, she stuck her arm out and grabbed the chain of the swing, surprisingly not being thrown by it herself, and stopped the swing immediately, sending Rebecca into the sand of the playground.

"Hey! I was on that! My ten minutes aren't up yet!"

"Neither were hers." She said, pointing at me.

"She was done with it, she told me so."

"Not according to what I've been seeing and hearing. Rebecca, did you really push Janessa off of the swing?" My teacher had come up behind me and was giving a stern look to Rebecca. Mrs. Ether didn't always catch Rebecca when she did something bad, but she'd caught her on enough and new that it was completely possible for her to have done this.

"Yes," Rebecca hung her head slightly, looking at Mrs. Ethers shoes. "But she wasn't even swinging, she was just sitting on it and staring at the rest of the playground!" she pointed her tiny little second grade finger at me as her face grew red. From embarrassment or anger, I didn't know.

"But were her ten minutes up?"

"N-no, Mrs. Ether."

"Then why would you push her off the swing?"

"Because I wanted to get on."

"Well, you'll just have to want it another time, because you're gonna stick with me for the rest of recess and tomorrow you're going to be sitting on the sidewalk."

"But Mrs. Ether!"

"No buts, we do not push people, Rebecca, come on."

Mrs. Ether wasn't a bad person to spend your recess with, and some of the kids from her class and from the other grades as well sometimes invited her to play with them, but you did not want to be told that you were "spending recess with her." If a kid ever heard that it would mean standing next to her for the rest of recess, watching to make sure none of the kids are hurt. This doesn't mean she caught the bullying, another teacher probably did but chose not to do anything because "it wasn't their kids."