EXCERPTS FROM MY LIFE//BIRTHDAY HORSES

I sat near the back of the bus alone most days. It wasn’t that I didn’t have many friends, I mean I knew Anthony who lived three doors up from me, and I knew James who sat up front, but it was because I had a crush on this girl named Lexy. She lived up the road two doors down from Ms. Rose, my mom’s best friend. Although Lexy was a grade above, she seemed to have infinite knowledge about everything which was anything, plus she was pretty. I would overhear her laughing with the kids in the back of the bus talking about kisses and dates, things I had never experienced before. I was just a third grader who had a crush. All I knew was basketball and One Mic by Nas. Another thing I did know though, was that one of her older siblings knew one of my brother’s friends, the one that had a Great Dane. I spent many bus rides home staring out the window in silence daydreaming about a coincidental meeting with Lexy through our mutual connections. Maybe I’d be with my mom when she picked up Chan from his friend’s house who owned a Great Dane and Lexy would be with her parents picking up her sibling from that same friend’s house at the same time and we’d meet and develop a line of communication that would’ve spilled on to the bus and maybe even into my first kiss.

One afternoon though, a girl from class sat next to me. She was chubby with dimples, and I recognized her as soon as she sat down. The first thing she said to me was she thought my name was so cool. I said thank you and we began talking. She would sit next to me quite often from that day forward, greeting me with her lunchbox in her lap and her welcoming dimpled-smile. She loved to be outside, and she thought the butterflies Mrs. Williamson was growing for our class was super-neat. I thought I was the only one who found metamorphosis intriguing, so we talked about that a lot. I was explaining to her how baffled I was that caterpillars fall asleep and grow wings with designs on them while they’re dreaming. She agreed. Our conversations were random, so random I found out she puts soy sauce on her rice along with butter. I had never had butter on rice before, nor had I planned to after she told me, but to each their own. I ate slices of bread with condensed milk as a snack, which was strange to a number of my classmates, so I can understand.

One sunny afternoon she revealed to me it was her birthday. Because I hadn’t experienced many birthdays relative to what I have experienced now, I didn’t keep track of time. A birthday would seem like it happened every 5 years, at least that’s how the time between each one felt. I was excited for two reasons. One, birthdays meant celebrations and celebrations meant cake, therefore she would probably have cake along with rice, butter, and soy sauce. Two, her birthday probably meant my birthday was coming up, which meant I was getting older, which meant I would soon be in the fourth grade. Old enough to learn about kisses and dates, preferably from Lexy who would be in the fifth grade at that point. Anyways my newfound friend with her dimpled-smile would get off the bus before me. Her parents would be waiting for her in their car, but this day was different as it was her birthday. As soon as the bus came to her stop, she stopped talking to me mid-sentence. Not out of rudeness, but out of awe. I turned to look out the window and her dad was there with a pony. We said bye to each other and I told her Happy Birthday one more time. As she got off the bus her face was red, and she was smiling ear to ear. I was so happy for her, so happy it was like I had gotten a horse for my birthday. I had never seen such things before. I didn’t know we could ask our parents for animals, I thought it was against the rules. Maybe this year I’d ask for a pony, or better yet butterflies.

When I look back, I think of how a crush of mine indirectly lead me to a new friend. It proved to me a genuine interaction, no matter how small it was, could blossom into something special such as a friendship. This was all from a third grader, which leads me to conclude that sometimes, some of the best teachers we can learn from in life are children.