Austin Gray
Moving Story
A boy goes through the process of moving.
I’m going to start off by saying that I’m originally from McHenry, Illinois. Now, we’re going to back to when I was in fourth grade. I was laying on my couch playing on my DS, minding my own business, and a half an hour went by. Then my parents walked into the living room, and they had these weird looks on their faces and they’re walking over all awkward.
In my head, I thought something was wrong like oh no they found out that one thing I did at school that one day, or I did bad on a test, all I knew was something bad happened. My mom kneels down next to me, she just looks at me for a second and says, “Austin… we’re moving.”
I didn’t start crying, but tears instantly started coming out of my eyes. The first thing I asked her was where were we moving and she said, Durango. Then I asked why and they gave some schtick on “Oh we’ve lived here long enough it’s time for a change in scenery.” After that, I asked how long until we were moving and she said two days.
The next day I had school and I’m pretty sure that one of my parents emailed the teacher saying that we were moving, because almost the entire fourth grade knew I was leaving. All day I got questions like, “Where are you going? Why are you moving?” I hate being the center of attention, and on top of that I hated being asked the same questions over and over again and not knowing how to answer it.
The second half of class was entirely dedicated to writing letters to the class. I wrote a letter to them and they wrote letters to me. They were about “how we were going to miss each other” and “how were all great friends.” We were a month into the school year, and I don’t remember any of those kids.
After school, we had a going away party slash birthday party because my mom’s birthday was in a few days. So, my two best friends were there and we just hung out the entire time and playing games and no one else was around us we were just doing that. It got late so we decided to celebrate my mom’s birthday we had a birthday cake, sang happy birthday, and took pictures.
Then people started to leave, and as people left we dropped one of my best friends off and we said our goodbyes and did our little secret handshake. I actually thought we were leaving then. But after that, we went to my grandma’s work because she has to get to work early, and she’s giving me this hug and she’s telling me, “Oh you’re going to have such a better life, everything is going to be better.” And I could tell that she was trying not to cry and I’m just thinking What is going on? She’ll see me all the time, This is so weird because the idea of moving still hadn’t fully sunk in yet.
Then we finally moved and my first two weeks here I didn’t go to school my mom wanted me to adjust and she didn’t know what school she wanted me to go to. I ended up going to Needham Elementary and my first day of school was actually a girl’s birthday. That’s always great, being the new kid on someone you’ve never met before’s birthday and just trying to say hi and tell them Happy Birthday and not doing it awkwardly… yeah, it’s difficult.
Not only that, but my first couple weeks at school were just weird because kids were really nice, but I didn’t know how to ask if they'd be my friend because I didn’t know anyone and it was just weird to me just walking up to some kid I hardly know, “Hey will you be my friend?” It doesn’t seem normal.
Time went on and I made friends and adjusted and it got easier. I do miss family and friends but I don’t think I would have changed moving because I’ve gone back and visited and I can see how much better my life is living here than there.