My Best Friend

Growing up outside a large city was great. My family lived in a three story Victorian-style home over looking the city in the distance. My next door neighbor was an elderly woman around the age of eighty. After the death of her husband, the elderly woman decided to sell her eight-bedroom home, and move to Florida to live out the rest of her limited life. A young couple moved in to the newly vacant home within a week. The couple had four children, one of which was my age. My mother encouraged me to introduce the boy my age to the other children in the neighborhood. I accepted her encouragement, and promptly walked to my new neighbor’s large front door. After knocking on the door, I was greeted by a young black boy. He we told each other our names, and then agreed to play two-hand touch fo

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Now it reminds me of how Greg Williams must have felt as he was rejected by his peers for participation in games. Even without his presence, I still follow the lessons that he taught me about equality. He had helped me to see how badly people can treat each other. My friend moved away, and we have never communicated to each other sense that day. Why will kids turn away from kids that are different from them? When I was young it confused me that the neighborhood children would naturally not want to play with my friend just because he was black. After a period of uncomfortable silence, they declined, and walked away. Without him I might have grown to feel that it is okay to treat black people differently. In Life on the Color Line, Greg Williams talks about how he confronted this kind of racism everyday of his life. We had been through a lot together, and it saddened me to see him leave.

At the age of thirteen my best friend moved away from our quiet suburb town. It didn’t make sense to me at the time that kids didn’t want to play with other kids, and it still doesn’t make sense to me. If all kids have a natural instinct not to play with black children, then why didn’t it effect my decision? These are all questions that I tried to solve at the age of seven. As I grew older, my understanding about racism would expand.

Common topics in this essay:
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Approximate Word count = 822
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

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