All chaos ensued. The apartment was filled with vibrant colors, a sign hung from the ceiling and balloons were strung everywhere. While all the grownups were noisily chatting on the huge couch, everyone else was sitting in front of an old clock, and yes, that includes me. The important person. Everyone was viciously tearing into a giant box of oily pizza and chatter filled the room. What were we waiting for, you may ask, you’ll see soon enough...  

Just before the noisy old timey clock put its thin tiny hand onto the peeling paint of a barely recognizable twelve, I felt a sharp coldness come down my back. I jolted upright and felt this piece of the arctic fall to the floor. I was worried that it was juice, or a liquid so I quickly took a sniff to see what it was. After “sniffing” the air for a few minutes, I came up with the conclusion that it was not something that could stain my shirt.  A few seconds later, everyone was laughing and I shot a truly betrayed glare at my friend, who was the cause of this. I looked at the floor where a single ice cube was slowly melting. Even though the ice cube did nothing wrong to me, as it was the demonic traitor that I called my friend had picked it up and put it down my shirt. After intensely staring at it, I lifted my foot and stomped with all my anger and rage in my foot. There was a sickening crunch as I lifted my foot and saw a puddle of both water and crushed iced bits.

 After my family and my friend finally stopped laughing, my dad said, “He really got you good,” and handed me a tissue.

 After wiping all the water off my back, the time finally came. I ran across the room, (with a slightly damp back and my shirt with a giant stain) and towards the table with wrapped boxes in every color imaginable. Blue, green, purple, and even the more exotic ones, like sarcoline, coquelicot, and even wenge. Then I saw the smallest box that I had ever seen. It was wrapped in a nice xanadu, mixed with an eburnean bow. I picked it up and started ripping the wrapping paper away, like a tiger ripping up its prey, all while taking precious caution to not rip whatever was in the box into shreds. After a couple minutes of spewing my anger out on the wrapping paper, I finally saw it. A regular yellow pencil with my name carefully written in gold. Then I realized what had happened, the dots instantly connected in my mind, and smiled.

 “You little jerk!” I shouted playfully as everyone laughed loudly at my outburst.

 Going back, I’m glad that I was able to figure out that it was a joke. Normally, I’m not the greatest at figuring out puzzles, and I was quite surprised that I was able to figure out it was a joke back then.

 After all the laughter died down, my friend said, “Sorry, I didn’t know what to get you, so I decided to make something random instead.”

 Even though I was still a little annoyed that I didn’t get something cool, like a LEGO playset or maybe one of those shoes that have wheels on the bottom, I realized how funny it was to everyone else and said, “I’ll get you back for this!” 

But little did I know, I never would. In a few weeks, he was gone. Forever. Now that I look back, I guess I shouldn’t have even been the slightest bit annoyed. A gift is still a gift, and I would truly understand that after he was gone. During the first few weeks, I was a wreck, and I would never truly get over it. However, I ended up keeping the pencil. Whenever I feel sad about my friend, I hold the pencil and try to remember that day, the day that was full of laughter, the day that I enjoyed so much. Even now, when I’m writing this, I still look back and remember what happened on that day.