Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer
Mae sat alone on the playground bench watching the other kids play. She didn’t really understand how to manage friendships yet…well at least she thought that must be the problem. But it seemed strange to her that it was always so complicated at school…
At home with her sisters, she didn’t have to make an effort…she didn’t seem to have to try to be anyone else but herself. Her sisters actually told her that she was “born, packaged ready to play”. Clearly the kids at school didn’t think so, but she didn’t know what she was doing wrong. Hannah, her oldest sister always says that Mae is the funniest person she knows. Her sister Olive calls her “gorgeous Mae”, not gorgeous in the way she looks, and Mae knows this…because she was born with a crooked nose and has a slight turn in her eye, which becomes less slight when she’s excited…so it was more likely ‘gorgeous’ in the way she was with people…always ready for a good time…ready to share a good story or listen to a good one! Kate, who was just two years older than Mae, told her she was smart and that she was going to do something great with her life one day…not great for herself, but great for all people because she was “always making sure everyone was ok, and knew a lot about the people who weren’t”…like the Murphy kids who she’d found looking in the bins for food….she’d told her Mum about them because she was worried they’d get sick or go hungry, and now her Mum dropped off dinners to them when she had the time.
She did like Kate’s idea that one day she’d do something great…but Mae didn’t for a second think she was perfect ….not at all….she knew Annabel Clements who was in her class was just the most beautiful girl she’d ever seen; she knew Henry Isaacson, who lived down the road was more smart than anyone she’d ever met and he was only twelve, not that much older than her really; and she knew that Marita McLoughlin was so good, good in the sense that she probably never had a bad thought in her life. Mae had most certainly had thought bad things, especially about her Year 1 teacher, Mr Higgins. He would hand her a wet face washer every morning in front of the whole class and tell her to wash her face…then he’d spray room deodorizer over her, not even warning her so she could close her eyes first. But although she had bad thoughts sometimes…she wasn’t a bad person and she knew that…so why didn’t the other kids? Was it her wonky nose or funny eye? If it was just that, her head told her that she didn’t really need kids like that as friends….she was better off on her own…that wasn’t really what her heart told her though.