The Small Things

-5- crushin' it

Copyright © 2015. All Rights Reserved. 

 CHAPTER FIVE: THIRD GRADE 

 D A T E : May 2005 

 ✖ crushin' it ✖

 Third grade was the year of the big kid's playground, the kiss, and the hospital.

Up until third grade, we had recess at the little kid's playground with the animal-shaped jungle equipment, basketball hoops so low that by the end of second grade we could all slam dunk, and the metal jungle gym they tore out of the ground the year after we graduated up to the big kid's playground.

The thing about the big kid's playground was the slide. No one could get enough of it, and you couldn't miss it for the world. It was obnoxiously yellow and spiraled around a great big post, and in the summer we'd come to the playground just to climb all over it to avoid using the stairs. I was one of the first kids in my grade to climb up on top of it and shimmy to the start without the teachers finding me, but then one of the big kids told me I couldn't do that otherwise I might break my neck.

It was true though. Some time in the beginning of the year this girl was waiting in line and leaned so far over the edge that she tumbled straight off the very top of the playground and broke her arm on impact.

That never happened to me, but Fynn got so freaked out about it that we rarely ever went on that slide again unless Parker was around to supervise us. Unfortunately, Parker wasn't even around anymore. He graduated up to the middle school across the massive parking lot where parents would loop around to pick up their kids from the elementary school. It was twice the size of the elementary school, and after school, Fynn and I would waddle our way over there between the time our class let out and the middle school bell rang.

Parker was still one of the shortest guys in his grade, but back then, all the boys were shorter than short and all the girls were sprouting up like flowers in spring. He'd grown his hair out over the summer, so now all those blonde locks were obscuring his vision. Eventually, his mom made him chop it all off, and for a while there we forgot he even had a forehead.

Fynn was the same. Whatever his brother did, he did too, and when he came to school with his hair all cut short and the front of it all spiked up, everyone was coming up behind him and rubbing their hands over the fuzz. He'd swat them away and yell, "Bugger off! Stop touchin' my head!"

"Quit complaining about it! You look fine," I reassured him, hearing the girls behind me giggling when I patted Fynn's hands back down to his sides. He pouted his slim pink lips before pressing them together tersely.

"Fine," he mumbled, ducking his head and scratching at the fuzz on his scalp.

I noticed little things about everyone a bit differently, like how Fynn's cheeks kept getting pink when I hung around him during class, or when Joni sat next to Duncan during music class and kept her hair all done up in little brunette ringlets. Duncan was one of Fynn and Ryan's friends, and sometimes when Joni and I hung out after school at my house, Fynn would have his friends over and they'd play Nintendo in their basement. I'd convince Joni to go, since she needed to be warmed up on the basics of video gaming, but she never really got into it.

It was on a day like that when Joni, Fynn, Ryan, Duncan, and I all crammed into the backseat of Mrs. Walton's car to pick up Parker from the middle school. I didn't mind the racket in the backseat where Duncan duked it out with Ryan over the last granola bar, but Joni kept looking back there and looking at me, and widening her eyes like they were crazy.