Missing Home

1. Preschool

"Okay honey, are you ready for your first day of preschool? It's going to be awesome!" Mom says to me, "No, I'm scared! What if I don't make any friends?" I exclaim, "Red, you don't need to be worried about that! When you make friends, you just click! There's usually no awkwardness involved! Now go on or else you're going to be late!" Mom explains.

I reluctantly get out of the car and walk into my preschool. A place completely unfamiliar yet familiar at the same time. It has a warm comforting feeling but also a feeling of dread and fear that lingers around.

I find my classroom and walk in, immediately greeted by Mrs. Green with a bright happy smile. "Hey Red! It's good to see you! Follow me! I'll show you where your desk is!" She says a little too loud for comfort at 9 in the morning.

I timidly follow her to my desk and sit down, she helps me unpack everything and put it where it needs to be before ditching me to sit at her desk and observe.

Around 10 minutes later she yells out that it's introduction time, we have to stand up, say our name, age, and two fun facts. I silently scream because I've pretty much never spoken to anyone else besides family, and I don't know what to say. But of course, right after I think that, Mrs. Green says that she knows that some of us are nervous, so she'll go first. "Hello everyone! I'm Mrs. Green! I'm 28 and two fun facts about me are that I've been married for 5 years and have 2 lovely boys!"

She calls on kids around the room and eventually it's my turn. I shyly stand up and say in my loudest voice that I can achieve right now, but it's not very loud at all, "Um, hi, my name is Red Mathis, and I'm um, four years old, and I, uh, have an older brother named Lucas, and my favorite TV show is SpongeBob" I say. Immediately after Mrs. Green yells out, "That was wonderful! SpongeBob is a very good show!" A little too loud once again.

Then the kid next to me has to go on with his introduction, so he stands up and starts speaking, "Umm, yeah, uh, my name is Caleb Jack and, umm, I'm four years old." He pauses to hold up four fingers. "And uhh, I like trucks and dinosaurs." He says, but someone says that he couldn't hear him, so Mrs. Green repeats it for the kid.

After a while, everyone had introduced themselves, she told us to work with a neighbor to do our worksheet, so I turn and ask Caleb if he wants to be partners, and he nods. We work for a while but get bored and start playing rock paper scissors to pass the time. As we're doing so, Mrs. Green walks up and asks how far along we are, I thought she meant in rock paper scissors so I said very confidently, "We're 7 rounds in! I've won 4 rounds and Caleb's won 3!" She looked at me kinda funny and said, "Oh! What are you playing?" And Caleb almost screams out "She's cheating at rock paper scissors! She keeps winning!" And that finally helped Mrs. Green register what I meant. "Oh well friends, we aren't supposed to be playing rock paper scissors right now! We need to work on our addition!" Me and Caleb sigh unhappily, but go back to working on our addition.

We finish our addition and turn it in, Mrs. Green eyes us suspiciously but I don't mind it. Me and Caleb go sit back down and play rock paper scissors for the remainder of the time until lunch rolls around.

We get seated at our lunch table and start talking again, when the topic of my name comes up. "Why is your name Red?" Caleb asks, but I'm not sure what to respond with because I genuinely don't know. I stare for a while until Caleb repeats the question. "Why is your name Red?" This time I answer because I don't want to be rude, "I... actually don't know..." I say shyly looking away from him. "That's okay! I don't know why my parents named me Caleb either!" He says and then laughs a bit.

We go outside for recess and Caleb comes up to me and asks if I want to play swings with him. I nod my head and he takes off running to the swings, and I follow with only a slight gap between us. We get over to the swings and push each other around on the swings, and then Caleb asks if I think he can land the jump if he jumps, and I sarcastically say, "I bet you won't." And he looks taken a back before snapping back with, "Watch me." And starts swinging really high. I watch from my swing and once he gets high enough he gives himself a countdown, "3, 2, 1, JUMP!" He yells out to himself and screams as he's falling. I watch him carefully and then he lands it, he didn't even realize he landed it until his scream came to a delayed end. "Hey! I did it!" He says, and I laugh.

The whistle blows a bit later and we race each other to the line, we tied. We walk inside and go sit down at our desks and Mrs. Green hands out a worksheet for fun, we complete it with ease and we get a piece of candy for finishing first.

A couple more hours go by and now it's home time. Mrs. Green takes everyone outside and we sit on a side of the playground as we wait for our parents to pick us up.

"Red Mathis! Your mom is here to pick you up!" Our principle yells out to me. I hop up and say bye to Caleb before running off to my car.

"How was school?" Mom asks. "It was so fun! I made a friend! And his name is Caleb! And he's really nice! And he likes trucks and dinosaurs! We played swings together and got a jolly rancher for finishing our worksheet first! It was so fun!" I exclaim. "That sounds like an eventful day! I'm glad it was a good one! Did you make any other friends besides Caleb?" Mom asks. "No." I respond. "Oh. Well you still have the rest of the year to make friends!" She says.