Giselle

            Recess was my absolute favorite time of the day when I was in second grade. It was the time out of the day that I could get away from that nasty Mrs. Sutter. She always had something to scold me with. “No, Donny, do not cut that girl’s hair!” “Did you just call her a dirt devil? What does that even mean? That’s it you’re going to the principal’s office!” “No throwing rocks at the building, Donny!” What did she expect? I was a kid. Alright maybe I wasn’t the most well-behaved kid out there, but I honestly tried to behave myself.

            Anyways, there was this girl named Giselle. For some odd reason she had a crush on me at the time. Me being the boy I was at that time would claim that she had “cooties”. At one point of time there was actually a game called “The Cooties Game,’’ very original name. Now before you go off and think that I was the devil as a child, this game was actually played by the whole class. The girls actually wanted to play this game to. The game was essentially a never-ending game of freeze tag except with “cooties.” Now back to this Giselle girl (no not Tom Brady’s wife). She was the only girl that was not a huge fan of it, especially whenever I said that she had “cooties.” Now I had a legitimate reason for saying this. The girl would follow me everywhere. One time she even followed me to the bathroom! I just wanted to pee in peace! That’s when I told her that she couldn’t come into the bathroom with me because she has “cooties.” For some odd reason, this statement somehow caused her to stop following me into the bathroom and sometimes around school. I had tried the traditional “can you please stop following me” or even told the teacher about it, but none of that worked.

            On this particular day during recess, Giselle was following me again. That day I was quite impatient since I forgot to do my homework that was due that day and knew I wasn’t going to hear the end of it from my mother later that night. We were playing kickball since it was kickball Thursdays. I really had to use the bathroom so I had to leave the game for a couple of minutes. As I was walking to the bathroom, I noticed that Giselle was following me yet again. I was so annoyed that this time I yelled at her. “Giselle, leave me alone! You have cooties! Get away from me!” The poor soul just looked down and started crying. I knew I messed up at that time. Yes, it was excessive that this girl was obsessively following me; however that did not justify my reaction. I was later told to go to principal’s office. Let’s just say that part wasn’t fun at all. On top of forgetting to do my homework, I also had this waiting for me when I got home. I learned that day to be more considerate of people’s feelings despite the situation. The sight of this poor girl being absolutely crushed by a couple of sentences that I had yelled still haunts me today.