Today I want to share with you two little stories.
At school I was protagonist of two small setbacks. The first was in kinder, when I was 5 or 6 years; and the second, in sixth grade, I was 11.
I do not remember the first one, but my mom tells me that I came back from school affirming that I would never return, and she even had to go to speak with the teacher, whose face and first name is the only thing I can remember: Nérida. My mom told to my teacher, what I said to her, and she asked if I was being bullied. The teacher said that, the only person that got attacked, was the girl I threw a rock at.
The second setback, I remember it well. I used to love sports of all kind, and at that moment I was playing football with some friends in the school, when the ball got stuck on a three. To catch it, we started to threw mangoes (it was a mango three) in direction to the ball, to make it fall. When there weren't anymore mangoes, we started to threw rocks. And, when I threw the first rock, it drew a perfect parabola, avoided the sticks and leaves, and landed cleanly on a friend of mine, Fernanda's forehead. She screamed, and it sounded through the whole school, leaving us all speechless. The blood started to pour from her forehead like a fountain, and I was left standing there, in shock. I never saw so much blood before, and I thought that I had broken her brain. A worker from the school heard the screams, so he took Fernanda to the school's infirmary. She couldn't stop crying.
She came back after a while, with a clean shirt and her head bandaged. She smiled at us while showing the bandages, as if she was holding a war trophy. Thank God, the injury was very small.
Some time later, Fernanda showed up with her head shaved, because of cooties. I got to see a scar on the opposite place that my rock had hit her before. Joking, I said that I was only responsible of one of them, and so she said, that the second one was an old scar from an injury she got while she was on kindergarten.
I shallowed dry, while in my memory, the story my mom always told me was playing. I have never thought that both rocks had landed on the same person.
When I came back home, I started searching for pictures of my kindergarten, just to have my suspicions confirmed. Yes, Fernanda was one of the few persons on the picture that were already studying with me on the same group.
She possibly already knew that it was me that threw her that rock the first time, but she chose not to say it out loud so she wouldn't upset me. I found myself thinking that, probably I was the only kid on earth that accidentally hit with a rock the same classmate, twice.
And so I wonder, how many people do we "punch" in our life, without noticing or caring about it? We always remember the people that do bad things to us, but we always fall to recall all the times we are the ones delivering the damage.
On the same way, we always seem to remember the most, the friends that give us favors and gifts, but we always forget the important ones: the ones that always have our backs, despite our mistakes, wrongs and clumsiness. I was always thinking about how a nice friend Luisa was, that was always comforting me and being generous, but always failed to recognize the silent royalty of Fernanda, that was my friend despite being victim of my bad aim, twice.
What do you think?
Undoubtedly, we humans live in a way that seems to put aside the times we do damage to our friends, family or simple passerby, only letting us remember the times we are helped, and we provide the help.
We always have a record of the bad words and actions we do, but we never stop to think about the consequences of those acts for the people that surround us, so we selfishly chose to only remember the people that do us good, and the good we do to the people.
So, it's necessary that we, in our lives, also stop and apologize for the damage we've done, and we also forgive for the damage inflicted to us, and make this of a habit. We need to start spreading good actions on our surroundings. We need to share the importance of the solidarity, and friendship.