According to my mother, I was always a social and energetic youngster willing to be friends with everyone and anyone. I always wanted to go to play dates and slumber parties. I never even napped in school because I constantly wanted to talk to my friends. However, my tendency to accept everyone into my circle has caused a variety of issues for me, and in my first-grade class, it caused a terrible accident.
In first grade, I went to public school and going in I was a bundle of nerves who really didn't know what to do with myself. I sat by myself on the first day and didn't really talk much, but I eventually made friends with the girl sitting next to me. We started talking to each other every day and became quick best friends. When I was younger I threw around the term best friends like you wouldn't believe, but I truly felt like we had made a connection and would be amazing friends. Then, after a week or so the seats were switched around and me and her were sitting next to some of her other friends who I hadn't met yet. My shy side came out again, but as time went on I got to know the other girls just as well and we were all inseparable. We played at recess together, sat together, ate lunch together, did projects together and a bunch of things that 7-year- old girls do. Out of all of us, I was the youngest, and the other girls sometimes picked on me for it saying that I was supposed to be in kindergarten. However, gullible me really didn't pay much mind to it because I trusted them. Before I knew it months had passed and I was extremely happy at school because of my friends.
One day, like any other first grade girls at recess, me and my "best friends" were running around playing pretend, and somehow came across a jump rope. Each of us took turns and argued over how long the turns should be, and were fighting like crazy. Eventually, the other girls decided that double dutch was the quickest solution to our pressing problem and I was nominated to go first. Little did I know five minutes later I would be tripped by a jump rope and fall face first into the pavement. The girls around me started laughing hysterically but quickly changed their mood when they saw my head. I had busted a hole into my skull and was bleeding a crazy amount. I had never seen so much blood in my life, and I started to scream. The teacher came running to us and the girls claimed how it was an accident and they had no idea how it happened, but I knew it was them. After I fell, they were laughing at me and saying how dumb I was to fall for their trick. Dazed, I was too out of it to speak up and was rushed into the building.
The teacher called the nurse and they tried to do some patch work and stop my bleeding, but they called my dad right away. When he got there I remember how worried he was. He picked me up and we rushed to the hospital where I would receive 10 stitches. When I came back to school I refused to talk to any of those girls who I once called my best friends. They secretly made fun of my stitches as I walked by, and I got stares through the halls. I only found out later that these girls, who I thought were my friends, actually secretly hated me for what had been half the year. Before that point, I had never encountered something like that and I was heartbroken. Something my mom said came into my head, "You can't just let everyone into your life so quickly because you never really know people at first." This experience proved to me that she was right and that people can really actually be terrible even if they don't show it. Since then, I have become a lot more cautious with who I let into my life, and I learned that you cant always trust everyone. Needless to say, I was no longer friends with them, and I ended up moving away for the second half of the year.
Of course, since then I have still made some terrible choices in friendships, relationships, etc., but no one is perfect. All I can say is that my terrible accident taught me how people can be on a small scale and I grew as a person because of it. I guess I could thank those girls for teaching me that lesson, but I won't. I will thank my mom for giving me that advice, and apologize to myself for not listening to her sooner.
