Jungle Jim Mayham- Jessica Rosa

She fell down on the floor, tears streaming down her face, only to see the blood trickle down her knee. Her name is Emily, and this is her story. It was a bright day like any other, being in the month of May. Emily and I had just been escorted outside along with the rest of our third grade class, along with the rest of our class. We ran along the playground to our one spot- The Jungle Jim. The Jungle Jim were bright red and high. High enough to climb on top and sit there, but not as high that you would have to be scared of falling off. We climbed to the top of the Jungle Jim and sat down. We were talking away, like normal, when we were hit with a shock wave. The shock wave happened to be no more than a tendency of jealousy. The popular people came outside with their lunches in lunch boxes. Their “Dora the Explorer” and “My Little Pony” lunch boxes that looked so extravagant. When we saw that they had steamy, luscious grilled cheese sandwiches, we felt out of place with our plain, daily routine, paper-bagged peanut butter sandwiches. We wanted so bad to be one of them. They came over to us and started to tease us because there were only two of us and eight of them. This group was the elusive group of “pretty girls” for the third grade. Really all they had was money. They called us mean names over and over again. They made Emily and I want to cry, but we knew better than that. We knew that if we cried because of these mean names we would be tortured our whole elementary school life. They finally decided to stop calling us names and started to play with our “Care Bear” book bags. These mean girls decided it would be fun to throw them in mud, so they hoisted our book bags up in the air and were about to throw them when Emily jumped off the Jungle Jim. She started racing towards the girls and started shouting at them to stop. They looked over at her in awe and dropped the bags. They crowded around her and made a little circle. The closer they got to her, the more closed up she felt. They were making fun of her all over again. Then one girl stood out in front of all the others and pushed Emily on the ground. Emily fell hard on the ground and started to cry. Her whole vision was blurring up as she tried to get up from the floor. She was able to see that the reason she had no strength was because she had cut her knee wide open and blood was gushing out from it; like a faucet leaking water. I ran to her and helped her get up, only to see that the girls once again had our bags. I got Emily sitting on the grass and ran back to these girls. I yelled at them for every possible thing. “You guys are supposed to be friends, not bullies”, I said. “Everyone looks up to you guys because you guys are supposed to be cool. But all I see when I look at you guys are a bunch of meanies”. (What can I say; I was like 8 and had a small vocabulary back them) I grabbed Emily’s book bag, and then mine, and I ran back to Emily. Those girls seemed to be surprised that someone had stood up to them for the first time. I learned a lot that day, thanks to Emily. She taught me to just be yourself because we were trying so hard to be cool, but in return we were a lot cooler than those girls. Those girls were bullies and it took real courage to stand up to them. Emily taught me to be strong no matter what; through every situation.