One fine Friday evening, the birds were chirping, and the sun was merrily shining. Our English teacher had dismissed the class and sent us for P.E. Quickening our pace, we raced towards the ground as it was a short period on Friday.

We quickly lined up and did some drills. Then I hurriedly put on my goalkeeping gloves and the football match started. After a while, I noticed that our only defender was not defending.

Fuming mad, I saw red everywhere, I started shouting at him, not caring about my position. Suddenly, the other team striker streaked past me and scored. I was livid with rage, not accepting that it was my fault, I started charging towards him and two of my friends had to stop me from hitting him. But even then, I shouted mean and nasty things at him. I was callous and pernicious, and struggled so much that our teacher had to restrain me.

Doing my consoling, the teacher told me that he could send me to the principal’s office, but he wouldn’t as he knew that I was not a bad child, and I had just gotten angry. I didn’t pay attention to his words as I was angry and inconsiderate.

I remained in a bad mood for the rest of the day, but just as I was drifting off to sleep at night that day, my teacher’s words echoed in my head, along with everything I had said to my friend. I thought about it and realised that I had made a terrible mistake, so I decided to apologise to him.

Bright and early on Monday morning, I woke up and, on the journey to school, thought about my actions. I decided that the first thing I would do was to find the boy I had said bad things to and apologise.

At school, I found him and approached him. I apologised sincerely for my actions the other day, telling him that I was truly sorry for hurting him and hoping that he would find it in his heart to forgive me. He looked taken aback and surprised, thinking about it for a minute or two before smiling warmly and accepting my apology.

To my surprise, he even invited me to his birthday party, and I was ecstatic. That day, I learned a valuable lesson — always be kind to others, no matter what.

Published in Dawn, Young World, March 1st, 2025