May of 1981 was the last month of that school year, but a new boy entered into my class. He wasn’t a very attractive boy, and he didn’t look friendly. I stayed away from him until the last recess that day. The new boy walked up to one of my boy friends and made fun of his ears, “Your ears are so big. You have elephant ears.”

My friend tried to run away, but the new boy grabbed him by the shirt. Then he was pulling his ears. I noticed that my friend was feeling hopeless, and I stormed up to the bully and pushed him away and roared, “What did he ever do to you? Leave him alone.”

The bully shoved my shoulder slightly and mentioned, “Have you seen his ears? They are huge!”

I roared, “He can’t help how his ears look.” After I looked at the bully’s ears, I noticed his ears were big too, so I continued, “You have big ears too.”

“Shut up,” the bully roared as he pushed me.

After I pushed the bully back, he fell down on his back. I smiled, and walked with my friend into the school building. We informed the teacher what happened, but all she said was, “Thank you Kelly for handling the situation.”

My friend and I dropped our jaws, because we couldn’t believe our teacher didn’t punish the bully at all. I figured if she kneed my butt, she could punish the mean boy some way. The bully got away with a lot of things for the rest of the month. He stopped physically pushed me around, but he continued calling me mean names. I didn’t let him bother me, because I knew was he was scared to fight me. My friend continued being teased about his ears. He tried his best to show a brave face. He did tell his mother about me protecting him, and she thanked me face to face several times. I felt like a hero at the time. Several years later, he had his ears surgically sewed back, so the kids would stop teasing him.

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Since Ms. Tact stopped giving out dance lessons, most of the girls from Plus Ten decided to stop learning to dance. They felt the playhouse would come to an end very soon. Stephanie Jones, Chrystal Cummings, Eve Roman, and Piper Warner continued taking dance lessons from other places.