Making new friends can be hard, especially after they fall off of your homemade zipline. I am going to tell you a story about how me and two of my best friends came to know each other. The first time I met my two neighbors, Maxine and Ibby, things did not go as planned.  Yet an unfortunate situation actually ended up bringing us closer together, and giving us something to laugh about later. From this experience I learned that sometimes embarrassing situations can lead to good things, and even funnier stories.

It was a perfect Spring day, the type of day that reminded Oregonians that summer was still coming, no matter how many rainy days we had to get through. I was a spunky and creative third grader, always making new inventions in my backyard. That is how my homemade zipline, held together by jump-ropes and a bike lock, came to be. One afternoon I came home from track practice, exhausted but still happy to see a clear cloudless sky, and was greeted by my dad.

“Hey Miriam!”, my dad called. “Guess what? Today I met two neighbors who are your age! I invited them over to meet you. They’ll be here in a few minutes.”

I was surprised, no, actually shocked.

“So, you’re telling me that you just invited two nine year olds to your house? They probably think you’re going to kidnap them!” I replied with a laugh.

“That is a totally normal thing to do, right?” He asked.

“Mom, if a man I’d never met before invited me to his house to meet his daughter would you let me go?”

My mom quickly replied, “Not in a million years.” I decided that I had better just assume that they were coming anyway, and if they were, I’d catch them up on the rules of “stranger danger”. Soon enough, the doorbell rang and I went to open it. I was nervous but excited, quickly imagining the fun of having two friends right next door.

“Hi, I’m Miriam.” I quickly said.

“Hi, I’m Ibby and this is Max. Well actually Maxine, but no one calls her that.” Ibby was outgoing, her big smile was contagious. Max was taller, but quieter.

We stood there for an awkward moment. Uh oh, I thought, what were we going to do? The zipline! I thought. This was my first bad idea.

A few weeks ago my older sister Jillian and I had had the brilliant idea of making a zipline. Our intentions for this zipline included ourselves, harnessed fifty feet in the air, flying across the whole neighborhood of Brooklyn. However, we were suddenly snatched back into reality when we stared at our tiny backyard, with one skimpy little ten foot tree.

“I really don’t think this is going to work,” Jillian said. But I wasn’t about to give up hope that easy.

“Okay, but what’s the harm in trying?”

“Hmmm, I don’t know, maybe this could result in our DEATH!?” Her scepticism didn’t last long because we seemed to have found the perfect rope. I’m not sure exactly why we had it, or if it was even a real rope (it could have been a extra long shoe lace or something), but in our overly-excited eyes, this thin piece of blue, 15 foot rope-string, was perfect. We grabbed a ladder, and dragged it across the cement of our patio to our little tree. This tree was the Bob Ross of trees, weird and a little sketchy, but loved nonetheless. His branches looked as if one more fat squirrel shuttling across would break it. But this tree was the only way to create our zipline. We carefully tied the rope to the top of the tree, but what would we hold on to? Brilliance struck like a bolt of lightning.

“Dad’s bike lock!” I yelled.

“What?” Jillian looked confused.

“That’s what we’ll use to hold on to!” There was no arguing with my genius idea. We would slide my dad’s u-lock onto the rope, and tie the rope to the end of our fence. We worked on the zipline for hours; checking and double checking the knots. Finally our hours of hard work paid off. The sun had set, but we still stood outside marveling at what we had created.

“It’s ready, are you?” Jillian said in her most official voice.

“I was born ready.” Man, I used to be so cool… or at least that’s what I thought. I climbed up the ladder, each step feeling like an eternity, but before I knew it I had reached the top,

“I can see everything from up here!” I marveled. By everything, I meant our neighbor’s backyard, but you get the point. I then grabbed onto the bike lock like my life depended on it, and jumped. For three beautiful seconds I was soaring. Then my feet were back on the ground.

So yeah, our zipline was pretty cool. When I showed it to Max and Ibby, I was pretty proud, and they were pretty impressed. Or at least I thought so. I climbed up the ladder and went down the zipline, showing them how it was done.

“So, who wants to go?”

“I can go next,” Max chimed in, “my grandma has a zipline.” Wow, I thought, cool grandma. She carefully climbed up the ladder, and reached the top. She grabbed hold of the bike lock. She stared at the rope, suspiciously. It was fraying at some points, but nothing to worry about, I assured her. She gripped the bike lock tightly and pushed her suspicions aside. She jumped, and for a second everything was fine. Then we heard the snap. It wasn’t a branch like I assumed it would be, it was the oversized shoelace, jump-rope-like, thin, blue rope. It had snapped in two, and Maxine was lying on the grass below the tree. In my head I was praying that she would just get up and say everything was fine, she was not hurt, and everything was okay. Unfortunately, everything was not okay. Maz was hurt, and as anyone would be, she was crying.

Ibby went to Max’s house to grab her mom, and I sat with her and my own mom. I was almost in tears too, I couldn’t believe this had happened. Max and Ibby were going to hate me forever. I could never show my face around this neighborhood again! But Max’s mom came, and was kind and understanding; she told us that Maxine just got the wind knocked out of her. I said goodbye to both the girls, a sick feeling of guilt and regret sat in my gut. As soon as they left, I ran up to my room and hid under my covers.

“Miriam, Maxine’s parents invited us over to hangout with them for a little while okay? Do you think you’ll be ready to go in an hour?” My mom said gently.

“I can’t go to her house! She probably hates me and never wants to see my face again! I mean if I was her I wouldn’t want to.”  It took a lot of convincing, but I decided that I had to go. Besides, avoiding her forever wouldn’t solve anything. I wrote her a I’m-sorry-you-fell-off-my-zipline-and-I-hope-we-can-still-be-friends card, and hoped for the best. That night Max and I laughed and talked for hours. All the fear and guilt I felt moments before melted away when I started talking with her. Max, Ibby, and I became inseparable. We’ve spent countless hours together just laughing on the floor, and have had a million movie nights and sleepovers. During the summers we would do everything together, we’d bike under the sun, swim all day, walk down the street to get ice cream. Me and Ibby both moved to different parts of the city, but the three of us will forever be friends. The two girls who I thought hated me turned out to be some of my best friends.