A GOod Friend #

Yasin got nervous, his English was not very good and the words always got stuck in his throat. He was very sad and wanted to run out of the playground back to his mother and father and never return to school again. But just as he was about to run, he heard a familiar voice. ‘Hi Yasin.’ And when he looked up there was Andrew standing right beside him. Andrew looked at the children gathered around and shook his head. ‘What’s wrong with you lot?’ he asked. ‘I told my friend Yasin that school was fun. Why are you ruining it for him?’ ‘He’s different,’ said a very tall girl who was standing at the front of the crowd. ‘So are you,’ said Andrew. ‘You are the tallest girl in the whole school and you don’t like it when people make fun of you, do you?’ Then Andrew looked at the boy with the curly hair. ‘And you don’t like it when people say that you have girl’s hair,’ he said to the boy. ‘We are all different and that is what makes us interesting. What would life be like if we were all the same as one another?’ There was silence among the children. Then Yasin lifted his head high. ‘Boring,’ he said with a smile. ‘That’s right!’ exclaimed Andrew, returning his friend’s smile. ‘Really boring!’ And with that all of the children began to laugh. ‘Really boring,’ they chanted at one another. Andrew went on to explain how he had spent the summer with Yasin, how they had built a camp together and played in the park, and how Yasin preferred Batman to Superman, and how he really was different because he didn’t even like hotdogs! The children all laughed some more and soon everybody was talking about all the things that made them different from one another. Peter Jenkins even lifted up his jumper and showed everybody a big purple birthmark on the front of his belly. ‘Now that’s what I call different,’ he said triumphantly. ‘I bet none of you have a big birthmark like mine!’ When break time was over, Andrew put his hand up in class and suggested to the teacher that they should spend the lesson talking about how great it was that everybody was so different from everybody else and how people came to England from all over the world to begin a new life just like his friend Yasin. The teacher agreed that it was important to be an individual, and she also said how wonderful it was that the whole of Britain was such a multicultural island. Yasin wrote these two words down in his book and promised himself that he would learn them both and remember them always. He also wrote the word ‘friend’ in his book. He already knew what that meant, but he just wanted to write it down because he felt so lucky to have a good friend like Andrew who stood up for people and did not judge them just because they were different.