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Taking a stand for friendship
Originally appeared on spirituality.com
In the beginning of the school year, one of my best friends was teaching gymnastics to me and another good friend. She’s a good gymnast and we were happy to learn from her. If you’re not a gymnast, you might not know what the word “spot” means, so I’ll tell you. The word “spot” means that if you were learning how to do a backbend, your gymnastics teacher would hold or “spot” you so that you wouldn’t fall until you could do it on your own.
My friend told us that we couldn’t spot, that she was the only one who could. And we agreed to that. Then one day we decided that she couldn’t tell us what we could or could not do. So at recess when we had nothing to do, we came up with the idea to spot each other and see who could do the most backbend kickovers in a row.
When our friend saw us doing this she told us, “You agreed not to spot someone without my permission.” We told the teachers what had happened, and they agreed that none of us could tell the others what to do. The teachers called her over and we talked calmly with her. I could see tears rolling down her face as she said why she thought that we should not be spotting. Her tears made me feel bad.
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