A bright light appeared as I opened the door outside to the playground. My best friend followed me out and I confidently strode towards my secret hangout. I silently praised myself about how cool I looked while getting there. I knew that the people around me looked up to me so I had a major boost in confidence during the second grade.

When we arrived at our hideout, we waited for some playground drama to happen. Soon, as I expected, while my friend and I cooled down in the shades of our hideout, some drama arrived. A friend of mine, who was in first grade at the time, approached me and pleaded with me to help her. She helplessly and frantically explained how a group of girls in her class stole her earrings. I reassured her and told her that I would teach these mean girls a lesson that they won’t ever forget.

My first grader friend started describing what the ringleader of the mean girls looked like. I scanned the playground with my eagle eyes and spotted her laughing with her posse. I intimidatingly walked towards her and my two friends followed behind me. The mean girls looked up at me and demanded me to leave. I rolled my eyes. I couldn’t back down after what these mere first graders said to me. I decided right then and there that something needed to be done to crush their ego and self confidence. With this in mind, the most obvious thing to do was to challenge them.

“Let’s do two challenges to determine who is more awesome and better than the other,” I told the ringleader of the posse.

“I’m definitely going to win,” she replied. I laughed mockingly and announced how the challenges were going to be determined.

“We each will get to choose a challenge to do,” I proclaimed. She agreed. The ringleader of the mean girls decided to have a competition of who can find a ribbon first in a pile of wood chips. I agreed with her terms. One of the mean girls hid a small piece of ribbon in a pile of wood chips. We began the competition and my friends cheered me on, however none of us could find it. The ring leader's friend then began to whisper where she put the ribbon to her.

“Cheater!” I yelled. She then denied my accusation and then afterwards she immediately found the ribbon before me. I rolled my eyes and began ranting about how she had to rely on the help of others because she, herself, was weak. I could tell that she was insulted so I felt accomplished.

“Let’s begin the next challenge!” I declared. This time I got to choose the challenge. In spelling class we learned some new challenge words and the hardest challenge word we learned was “appreciate”. Having this in mind I challenged the ring leader of the bullies to spell this word by herself. If she spells it herself correctly then she wins.

“And this time,” I stated mockingly, “Try completing this challenge without cheating.” Offended, she attempted to spell “appreciate”.

“A-P-E-R-E-T-” she began.

“You are wrong!” I laughed at her stupidity. The leader of the girls pouted and sneakingly walks toward a teacher and asks her how to spell “appreciate”. She runs back towards me and spells it correctly. I sarcastically congratulate her and then embarrass her in front of her posse by stating her sneaky cheating ways. Soon after, the teachers called everyone to go inside. I snatched my first grader friend’s earring from the bully’s hand and returned it to my friend. After this day, the conflict with the mean girls ended. My reasoning that the conflict ended so quickly that day was because on that day, not only did I snatch away my friend’s earrings from them, but I also snatched the bully’s big ego and confidence away from her. From that day on, my friend was never picked on by them again.