An unlikely friend

When people think about the first day of school, they picture talks with new
friends, new and kind teachers and lots of fun. Well, my first day of school
was not like that. The just-risen sun shone softly on the city streets,
bringing with it a flurry of early-morning activity as I walked to my school.
As I entered my class, I could see many people talking with others and in a
state of bliss.

As I entered the brightly-lit classroom, I talked with my friends for a while

till our class-teacher, Mr Brown strolled into our classroom with a boy. Our
teacher introduced him as Robin and told us that he is a mute boy. He then
asked, “Does anyone want to sit beside him?” A finger was pointed to the
seat beside me. Mr Brown asked him, “You want to sit there?” He nodded.
“Ok then” said our teacher. I was crestfallen hearing that. I wondered,
‘Why does he have to sit beside me?’. As our classes started, I was
starting to get bored as I could not even talk to someone who was sitting
beside me. When our lunch started, I went and asked Mr Brown if I could
get my place changed but he simply refused. When I tried to sit with my
friends, they simply told me to go away because of Robin. I could not be
any sadder that whole day.

As our music class started, our music teacher, Mr Wong apprised us that
we are going to have a music competition between girls and boys. To win
we had to impress our music teacher more than the other team. The girls
chose singing while the boys chose musical instruments. The girls’ sang
incredibly well gaining sir’s good impression. To make it a bit easier for us,
Mr Wong told each one of us to pick an instrument present there at that
time and asked us to present individually and not as a group in perfect
synchrony. Many people chose guitar, drums, etc. but still could not do well.
At last, when we lost all hope and bummed out, Robin wanted to go and
play the piano. To this response, everyone laughed like there was no
tomorrow. But that still did not change the determination in him. As he put
his delicate fingers on the piano, soft and melodious music filled my ears. It
was like his hands had a magical touch. All the laughter around him quickly
died out. Mr Wong was completely mesmerised with the tune. He
applauded Robin and a sense of guilt formed in everybody’s throat. “You
did great”, I told him. He simply grinned from ear to ear. Finally, we won
the duel and returned back to our typical classroom to be greeted with Mr
Brown who was teaching us journal writing.

Our task was to write a journal on the events that happened on that day.
After everybody was done, he read out a part of Robin’s journal, “ Today
was a fantastic day. I even made a new friend called Williams.” He
stopped there and looked at me. I and Robin laughed and we became best
friends from then on.