Playing in the Street

Playing in the Street

Children usually like to play all day long, in groups and in certain places. Sometimes multiple groups like to play in the same area and these kids get along with each other while others don’t so they get involved in combats or disputes and minor arguments over things like who will take the slide first or “I got here first” or “I want the same ice cream flavour that you have but it is not available” or “I want the same toy that you have but my mom won’t let me buy it” so they either snatch that toy from the other child or simply break it which leads to another problem like “he broke my toy” or “he was not letting me play with his toy” and so on. Though some of these might not mean a lot to us, for kids it does. Like the ice cream, the toy and the slide, compromising might be the solution rather than being upset and gloomy because of it for the rest of the day when you could be content with what you have. Similarly there were two groups with different traits the “Without Borders” who loved nature and animals and were very kind to everyone. On the other hand were the “Baddies and Buddies” who weren’t actual kids you would like to play with because of their disrespectful manners, not compromising, using curse words in every line they say, they didn’t even treat each other well and always had a competition amongst themselves that who is meanest of the mean and is an absolute disgrace which seems dumb because they all are the chips of the same block but as good people exist they did exist and had some members. These groups kept the initials as their abbreviation for Without Borders was WB and Baddies and Buddies was B&B. The WBs members were Kai, Blythe, Nino, Alya, Adrien, Marinette and Kevin. And the members of B&Bs were Claudia, Byron, Emily, Jacob, Lola, Cessair, Felix, Chloe, Portia, Cameron, Saskia and Calvin. I am Jasmine and I was new to that city and had no idea about all this till the B&Bs started bullying me. I was scared to go out in case I bump into them and they started teasing me again and went into depression. I didn’t tell anyone what was going on in my mind and pretended to be sick so that I wouldn’t have to go to school. Eventually my parents realised that I was lying and they didn’t know why so they sent me to school and the B&Bs started taunting me, saying that I was a coward and weak. Luckily, Marinette saw all this and came to help me out of this pickle, she stood up for me and for me she was a hero and I really wanted to become her friend which wasn’t hard because instead she asked if I wanted to be friends with her and her group. Group? I asked. She told me to wait for her outside the school after school. So, I did what she said. 

There she introduced me to her gang. They were awesome and friendly. I am going to have fund with them!, I said to myself. Then they explained to me all that was going on. The B&Bs wanted the whole ground to themselves because obviously sharing wasn’t in their blood and attempted to kick us out of the park by being rude and plotting against us and accusing us for wrong doings. They accused us of stealing by putting their things in our bags and cheating by putting test paper answers in our bags and everyone believed them and started to hate us. They annoyed us till we got frustrated and started thinking about it all day long. We couldn’t take this anymore and had to do something to solve this problem and so we came up with different solutions. The B&Bs acted to be nice in front of others and criticized us when we were alone. Marinette suggested ignoring them and living normally. We had fun  alone but it didn’t work because the B&Bs told everyone how rude we were to them and that we ignored them so this plan failed and plus now everyone thought we were manipulative though the real manipulators were the B&Bs who were also passive aggressive. Alya said that we should make them taste their own medicine and started playing like B&Bs did to us with our feelings but ended up hurting ourselves, so this plan also clearly failed. For the next few weeks Blythe wanted us to do nothing so we were just stressed out. 

Then, I had a weird dream in which we were kind to the B&Bs and they changed and understood the meaning of love and kindness and why is it important to spread it instead of hatred. This seemed weird to me so I kept this thought to myself but I kept thinking about it. Can it really be? Can love and kindness conquer hate? Were we not going on the right track? Can this solution end our long suffering? It seemed impossible, it seemed like the most ridiculous idea but we didn’t have any other plan or choice so I thought to give it a try. I convinced everyone to do this- Kevin, Marinette, Adrien agreed while Blythe, Kai, Nino and Alya were sure it would fail. But I convinced them by saying we didn’t have another plan and it was better to try and fail than to not try at all. 

So the next time we met the B&Bs we greeted them with a smile, Alya’s smile was obviously fake but thankfully the B&Bs didn’t notice that and they were left confused. We took them out for free food and different places and paid for their expenses. We also helped them in both big and small tasks, from helping in school work to picking up things for them. The B&Bs never thanked us but we kept this practise and eventually made them feel like they were drowning in a sea of favours and that they were bound to be kind to us when they recalled all the kind deeds we had done for them.
This was exactly what I had planned! So, we all realised that being good pays off and what hatred and force can’t achieve, love, kindness and compassion can! Even though we wasted a bit of time and money, it helped us from going into eternal depression, the B&Bs, who are now a part of us from being mean for the rest of their life and being hated by everyone and other people who encounter them from degrading themselves for the rest of their life.   

-Hoshana Paul
Pakistan.