My broken teeth exposed a fake friend.

When did you experience your first fake friend? I met mine in the fifth grade and it wasn’t pretty. We’ve all had our fake friend firsts and my exposure to one felt like it happened way too early on in life. Here’s the story of when my friend was confirmed fake.

Back in the fifth grade, my teacher held a supposed-to-be-fun gym session which turned out to be a nightmare when I fell on my face and broke my two front teeth. We were playing a ridiculous version of soccer called “Australian Soccer”, where there were two teams and each student was assigned a number. Once your number was called, you would have to get up, run clockwise around the gym until you got to your “net” (which was a bench flipped on its side), and jump over it for the soccer match to begin.

My number and a few other numbers were called, so I did the damn clockwise run, got to my team’s net and unfortunately, I jumped a bit too late so my foot got caught under the bench and I fell face-first onto the ground. It hurt like hell. My teeth broke the fall so that my nose wouldn’t.

I continued the next month with my two broken front teeth before I could get them fixed. A temporary solution before I was able to get a permanent one. During this month, I had friends who looked out for me, others who made fun of me, and one so-called friend who taught me something valuable. This “friend” was never not nice to me, but I do remember that she never really talked to me unless our other mutual friends were around. So, this is what happened the day I realized she was a fake friend to me

She slithers her way into the seat next to me while I’m minding my own business writing out answers to some math questions. “Sara, how are you? Are your teeth okay?” she asks.

“Yeah, I’m okay thanks,” I respond happily. We weren’t the closest of friends, so I appreciated her checking in.

She looked at my teeth with sheer focus. “Can I see where it broke?” At that point, everyone wanted to see what it was like to be almost toothless.

“Sure,” I showed her a forced smile, exposing my two sad teeth.

“Oh no, that sucks,” she seemed to be sympathetic to my plight, but of course I was wrong. I responded with, “Thank you, I-“

But she interrupted me, “What answers did you write for these questions?” Can I see?”

I was a bit stunned by her bluntness, but I said, “Sure, here.”

And in that moment, it was confirmed that this girl was the definition of a fake friend. She didn’t care for me and used my pain and kindness to her advantage.

Even if you are the sweetest person on this planet, not everyone will like you. I wrote about this topic in a previous post, when one of my friendships came to an end and it was a hard pill to swallow. You aren’t here to please everybody. Life would be so exhausting if that was the case. If there is someone in your life who is problematic then know that it is okay to set boundaries to protect your peace. I have no idea where that girl from my fifth-grade class is today, but I’m grateful to her for the lesson little me experienced that day. And just like my broken teeth, all problems have a solution whether it is to get a dental crown or do a root canal, maybe even a cleaning. I had to do all three.

Your everyday girl,
Sara