Our Fifth House

We were excited to move out of Granny's house and even though this was the 6th place I had lived it was the fifth house with my mom and brother. It was a cool house that had TWO bathrooms we had never had that before. My mom decided she would sleep in the family room and the little bathroom was hers. My brother and I each took a bedroom and shared the other bathroom. But only moms bathroom had a shower and so we all took our showers in there and the extra bathroom was rarely used except to hold dirty laundry.
I was excited to start my new school. I had been so popular at my previous school that I was sure the same would happen here. I was wrong. I started in the middle of the school year so I was different. I had just turned 11 and was older than most of the kids in my class. My teacher had sent a note to my new teacher explaining all of my wonderful attributes so the kids saw me as a teachers pet right off the bat. There was a couple of kids I knew from living on the church property from the neighborhood. One girl lived in the houses that the church also owned. The church had decided to stop renting the houses to tear them down for a building project and the families ha to move. This girl felt that since I went to that church it was my fault she had to move. She began to spread lies about me. Two other kids also knew me but one was very shy and the other was a boy. I had a crush on the boy when I was 4, and was glad he went to my new school, he was not!
Soon I was teased on a daily basis. One boy had decided to nickname me "Lunar Rover" because I was white as the moon and as ugly as a dog. This began my adventure at this new school and I was a very sad little girl.
Every day I came home from school crying that everyone hated me. My mother refused to believe it, but I knew it was true. Tired of my crying, mom sat me down and told me to pick one kid from all the others and ask her why she hated me. I decided my mother was crazy and it had been so long since she was in school that she just didn't understand. After a few weeks I too became tired of the drama and decided to give her idea a shot.
I picked the girl, she had braces like me an was just as awkward as I was. She didn't tease me out loud like the others so I thought I might have a chance. After everyone ate lunch each day we would stand behind a line and wait for the proctor to blow the whistle then everyone would run to the playground. You wanted to be first to get a swing, ball, jump rope or whatever you wanted to play so we all were ready to run. It was here that I chose to ask her my question. As we were waiting for the whistle I simply asked "why do you hate me?" and her first reply was because I laughed like a horse. Because of my braces my gums showed when I laughed and it was ugly according to her. Then the whistle blew and she ran away. So the next day I went up to her again and asked my same question and she told me that I snorted like a pig. This continued for three days and her final answer on Thursday was simply because everyone else does. I realized I was wearing her down so I followed her as she ran away and she went to the swings where she promptly saved one, not for me. Her best friend was going to swing with her and I was happy to find out that her best friend was my shy friend from church. So I asked to swing until her friend showed up. Of course she said no, but I didn't give up, until she punched me. Well I punched her back an soon we were in a fight and the proctor was pulling us off each other and dragging us to the principals office. The principal knew that I was having trouble making friends and assumed that Cathy had started the fight but when he asked we both stated that I had started the fight. He let Cathy go and I knew my life was over but he was a kind man and said he knew I was having a rough time so he would let me off with a warning and I was allowed to return to class.
Outside the office Cathy was waiting for me and she barked her question at me as I turned the corner, "Why did you say you started it?". I said because I wanted to swing and that's what we were fighting over. She gruffly agreed and we both returned to our perspective classrooms but an odd thing happened the next day. I didn't ask the question again but when I walked by the swings Cathy yelled to me that she was saving me a swing! I wish I could tell you that soon everyone stopped teasing me but that is not what happened. But from that day forward Cathy and I became friends and eventually best friends. Which made life a lot more bearable in my new school.