Checking to do list.... Friendy Pictures, Check. Friendy Act, Check. and The last one is Friendy Names and Friendy Story. of my to-do list then my Friendy name is The Slimey Banana for this first friendy month.
New Friendy Story
Story One, By TianTheFrienshipper
Yasin’s family moved from Iraq to England when he was just a young boy. Yasin did not want to leave his home in Samarra but his father said that it was best for the family because it was not safe to live there anymore and he wanted his son to grow up in a country that was accepting of all people. Yasin’s father told his son that England was a multicultural country where people lived and worked together regardless of race or religious beliefs.
Although Yasin was not happy about leaving Iraq, he soon settled into his new life in a big city called London. London was very exciting with its tall buildings and museums, and Yasin especially liked the London Planetarium and the big River Thames with all of its old bridges.
Yasin even made friends with a boy who lived next door called Andrew. All summer long Andrew and Yasin played in the park or went to the zoo with Andrew’s mum. Andrew shared his toys and his comics with Yasin and told him all about his favourite superheroes. They even built a camp in Yasin’s back garden where they would hide from the grownups.
The summer was a fun time and young Yasin soon felt quite at home in London even though it was a very big city and not nearly as sunny and hot as it was in Samarra. His English got better and better, especially with help from Andrew, although there were a lot of words that Yasin did not understand and he often felt silly because he could not speak as well as he would like.
When September finally came around and the leaves began to fall from the trees, Yasin’s father explained that it was time for his son to go to school. Yasin was seven years old so he would be going to year three of the local primary school – the same year as his friend Andrew!
Although Yasin was very nervous about going to school, his father and mother assured him that it would be a fun place where he would meet lots of new friends and learn lots of interesting new things. ‘English schools are supposed to be very good,’ said Yasin’s mother.
‘And you will learn some very interesting things and your English will get better in no time,’ assured his father.
Yasin was still not convinced, but when Andrew knocked on the door that morning with a big smile on his face saying how fun it was going to be at school, Yasin felt much better because he trusted his friend.
The two boys chatted all the way to the school gates: Andrew told Yasin about the playground and who was the best teacher and what boys were the most fun and what girls were pretty and how they often served custard for pudding at lunchtimes. Yasin did not know what custard was, but Andrew looked very excited about it so Yasin thought it must taste very good.
But when the boys got to their class, things did not go how Yasin imagined they would. The teacher told Andrew to take a seat at the front of the class as she introduced Yasin to the rest of the children. He did not like standing up in front of the class and one boy shouted out that he was a smelly foreigner. The boys and girls all laughed, and then another boy made fun of Yasin’s accent when he was asked to say his name and where he came from. ‘I can’t understand him, miss. He can’t even speak English,’ said the nasty boy.
Finally Yasin was allowed to take a seat at the back of the class, but he wished that he was next to Andrew as he felt very alone. The girl sitting beside him kept looking at him in a strange way that made Yasin uncomfortable, and during the lesson she put her hand up and asked the teacher if she could move places. Yasin did not understand what he had done to offend the girl.
When the bell went it was time to go out into the playground. All of the children closed their books and put on their coats and headed out of the door into the bright autumn sunshine. The teacher kept Yasin back for a moment and gave him a badge with his name on which she pinned to his jumper. ‘There you go,’ she said with a smile. ‘Now all of the children will be able to learn your name.’
Yasin thought that the badge looked silly, and when he went out into the playground all of the children began pointing and laughing. ‘You’ve got a girl’s name,’ said a small boy with curly blond hair.
Yasin wanted to explain that it was not a girl’s name but he was too nervous because all of the children were pointing at him and laughing. When 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 of children.
‘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. ‘Flippin’ boring!’
And with that all of the children began to laugh. ‘Flippin’ 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 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 friend 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.
Story Two, By TianTheFrienshipper
There once lived a mouse and frog who were very good friends. Every morning the frog would go to visit the mouse who lived in a hole inside a tree. The mouse very much enjoyed the company of the frog, but the mouse did not realise that the frog was growing increasingly frustrated because it was always him who had to visit the mouse and never the other way around. The lazy little mouse did not know it at the time, but he was slowly making an enemy of his good friend, the frog.
One afternoon, when it was time to return home, the frog decided that he had had enough of this one-sided friendship. And so the frog tied one end of a piece of string to his leg, and then tied the other end of the piece of string to the little mouse’s tail without him noticing.
The frog waved goodbye to the mouse and then dived into the pond at the foot of the tree far below. All at once, completely to his surprise, the string pulled tight on the mouse’s tail and he was dragged from the safety of his tree and sent tumbling into the air towards the pond below. Splash!
The poor little mouse could not swim, and as much as he struggled and struggled to free his tail, he could not untie the piece of string. After much splashing and struggling, the poor mouse finally drowned in the pond.
‘That will teach you to make a fool out of me, you lazy mouse,’ thought the frog.
But this misdeed did not go unnoticed: high up in the sky, a hawk spotted the little mouse floating in the water below. And so the hungry hawk swooped down towards the pond to grab the little mouse for its dinner. It was only when the hawk grasped a hold of the mouse with its sharp talons that the frog remembered he was still tied to the mouse by the piece of string. Up, up into the sky went the frog, until the hawk came to rest in the tallest branch of a nearby tree. It was then that the frog realised the error of his ways. In setting a trap for his friend, the frog had also set a trap for himself and sealed his own fate. And now he too would be eaten by the hawk because of his wicked plan.
There is an old African proverb that goes... ‘Do not dig too deep a pit for your enemy because you may fall into it yourself.’
Story Three, By TianTheFrienshipper
A story tells that two friends were walking through the desert. During some point of the journey they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other one in the face.
The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything, wrote in the sand “Today my best friend slapped me in the face”.
They kept on walking until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath. The one who had been slapped got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but the friend saved him. After he recovered from the near drowning, he wrote on a stone “Today my best friend saved my life”.
The friend who had slapped and saved his best friend asked him, “After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, you write on a stone, why?” The other friend replied “When someone hurts us we should write it down in sand where winds of forgiveness can erase it away. But, when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it.”
The End
Do you like the story and The friendy name please kudo and comment -Tian