My Best Friend

My favorite essay.

“Who doesn’t have someone to play with at recess?” My old, crinkled teacher crackled to us kids. My sweaty, shaky palm went tentatively up in the air. Oh, how all the children looked at me. I could see their demeaning eyes glimmering with laughter. My little palm, trembling, lowered into my lap. You see, I was never blessed with great social skills. As a child I was quiet, awkward, and afraid of everything. These three personality flaws seemed to hinder my growth all through my life. It’s something I’ve lived with and dealt with through every day of every single year; however, it is something that I’ve grown to embrace and solve in different ways.

In first grade, my teacher, with her thick rimmed glasses that hung low on her nose and wobbly step, brought all the children to the blue rug in the back of the room. The rug was the symbol of fun"little did I know this “fun” would start a cycle for the rest of my life. The teacher kept all of the children from jumping around and climbing all over each other and made us focus on the lesson she was about to teach. I could see in their eyes their hope for something more thrilling than spelling. Today the wrinkled woman had another lesson planned"friends. She spent most of her lesson talking about how friends should treat each other and what a friend means. She ended her lesson with asking the question, “Who doesn’t have someone to play with at recess?” I lowered my head and raised my hand. It was true, I spent most of my days roaming around the school yard all alone picking up rocks or cool pieces of bark. The tiny teacher lowered her glasses down her nose and gave me a good hard look. She then proceeded with saying, “Who will play with Kaitlin during recess today?” For the rest of the year I was assigned a friend to play with at recess. Some kids would stay and grudgingly play with me and others would run off. After that year I changed schools and vowed to myself that life would be better and for a year it was.

It wasn’t until third grade that I felt the same embarrassment and humiliation that I had on that one day in first grade. It was game day in our third grade class. This month the other two classes in that grade would be joining us for the day. For game day we were asked to bring a game and a treat. My mother helped me prepare for the day by bringing my favorite Disney bingo game and the best treat ever"chocolate covered graham crackers. I walked proudly into that game party and sat down next to the wall. A few other students wandered over to my area and looked at my game. Slowly one by one they all left until I was the only one playing my game. I leaned against the wall and ate my graham crackers alone until finally the game day was over. That night I went home to my family who didn’t hear a word about that day until a few years later.

My life repeated the same cycle for many years. I would move in and out of groups of friends and never really feel comfortable. I would have friends who I would consider best friends, but they weren’t people who would go the extra mile to make me happy. I felt as if I was going through this whole “life” thing all alone. It wasn’t until about a month ago that I learned that I was never really alone. One of my Facebook friends updated his status and said, “Sometimes I feel left out, like no one really cares about me anymore. Then I remember The Creator of the whole world is sitting right here beside me and that makes everything better.” That one simple sentence set off an explosion of thoughts and memories inside my head. I learned from those few words that the Lord was always with me, through every day of my life. He was with me when no one would play with me during school. He was also with me when no one would play my game or eat my chocolate covered graham crackers. I always had a best friend who would work with me through the thick and the thin. I never had taken the time to really think about it until my friend posted that. It’s the same for everyone. We may always feel alone and we may always feel left out, but we aren’t. There is someone who is always thinking about us, someone who will constantly be there for us. I guess it just took me a whole lifetime of silence and embarrassment to really see the whole scope of things. Never have I felt so much happiness and fullness in my life since I’ve learned that there is someone out there who only wants the best for me. The Lord has been through everything and He knows just how it feels. We can constantly talk to Him throughout the day and tell Him of our troubles. He’s someone who will listen no matter what we have to tell Him. There is no one in this world who could possibly be a greater best friend and He would’ve played with me at recess"assigned or not.

Reviews

[Aaron Browder]

I can see why this is your favorite essay. The writing is solid, but really it's just a great story, and I can totally relate to it. If this were the start of a novel, I would want to read the whole thing.