Prompt 500

Third Grade:  What do you feel like the differences are between girls and boys in how they act?  Tell a story with at least one character from each gender having a conversation.

Jenny was pretty upset with her parents moving her to a new school in the middle of the school year.  She wasn’t as mad as her brother John, who was 14 and starting high school fresh, but she still thought she deserved the right to be kind of mad.  Her mom has ensured her that in no time she would be invited to sleep overs and pizza parties.  Mom didn’t realize that pizza parties were for school functions and not sleep over but whatever.  John locked himself in his new room for a weekend.  Dad was not happy.  He yelled at them about a better life.  He even used curse words to discuss it with Mom when he thought Jenny wasn’t listening.
Granted, her new room was a lot bigger.  And the back yard was so big Dad had talked about a pool or backyard kitchen.  Jenny knew this was prime time to request a dog for Christmas.  It was almost Halloween and she had good grades at her old school.  Now with the move and this new school stuff AND the bigger back yard it was high time they pay up on her dog.  8 years old was way more responsible of an age than when she first asked at 5.  She knew she was just a little kid then and didn’t know what she was in for.  But at 8 she had managed to keep a fish alive during a move across the state.  And she was now responsible for the cleaning of her own personal bathroom.  Santa owed her this one.
Mom drove up to Preston Elementary and mumbled something to herself about the visitors spots being all screwy.  Even mom was having a hard time adjusting to this new life.  Jenny took some comfort in that.  Mom quit her job and was going to try to be a stay-at-home mom.  To Jenny that just meant that she would be dropped off and picked up instead of having to walk to the bus stop with John everyday.  This was probably the best thing about moving because John and his friends were total jerks and always made her walk almost a block ahead of them so she wouldn’t hear them curse or talk about girls boobs.  But four of them talking about the same thing at the same time was incredibly easy to hear.  Boys were dumb.
Mom walked Jenny into the school and talked to the Assistant Principal for a while.  They then showed Jenny to her classroom which was awkward because the bell had already rung and so everyone looked at her when she walked into the room.  Her new teacher, Mrs. Jones looked remarkably similar to her old teacher, Mrs. Bell.  Maybe all third grade teachers looked the same to help students get used to new schools if they had to transfer.  Mom and Mrs. Jones exchanged email addresses and Mrs. Jones escorted Jenny to a seat that already had her name on it.  Luckily, everyone else in the class had their name on their desk as well.
By the time lunch came along, Jenny was a little relaxed that she wasn’t behind on anything.  She had even read the Indian in the Cupboard book the class was currently working on so she was comfortable in the homework assignment of chapters 5-8.  They all followed Mrs. Jones to the table their class ate lunch.
Jenny ended up sitting next to a boy in the class named Alex.  She was hoping to get to sit next to Madison B. or Madison F. because they both had really cute hair and she wanted to get the skinny on the school from them.  But it seems everyone wanted to sit by them.
Alex looked up from his book and glanced at Jenny.
“You’re new here,” he observed.
“Aren’t you Captain Obvious,” Jenny retorted.
“What does that mean?”
Jenny shrugged.  She didn’t actually know who Captain Obvious was, but it was something her brother would say whenever she talked to him.  “I’m sorry.  Yes I’m new here.”
“Do you like Pokemon?”
Jenny looked around suspiciously.  She noticed that Alex was almost purposely positioned away from the rest of the class.  This morning he wasn’t disruptive or even really eager to answer questions like a nerd, yet he was sitting her at lunch reading a book and asking about Pokemon.  This was nerd alert tendencies.  She didn’t want to be associated with a nerd day one.  But Jenny didn’t just like Pokemon.  She loved Pokemon.  She was considering going as Pikachu again this Halloween.
“I know about it,” she answered Alex.  She poked around in her lunchbox to see what her mom packed.  Sandwich.  Grapes.  Carrots. Chips.  Pudding cup. AND Goldfish.  This new stay-at-home version of mom was awesome.
“I’m thinking about going as Pikachu for Halloween.  Actually I am in fact going as Pikachu this Halloween.  Halloween is in 17 days.  That’s 13 school days and four weekends.  I’ve already read Indian in the Cupboard because my brother has all of the books even though he says they are really old and they even have movies about them but I like the books better.  I’m just re-reading this part because Mrs. Jones assigned it for homework.  I like to be ahead. And I do my homework at lunch and at recess so when I get home I can watch Pokemon.  Or Digimon but they aren’t as good.  My mom bought me all the DVD’s for my birthday and I just watch the original series.  It’s much better.”
He stared at her from behind his glasses and munched on a tuna sandwich.
“I see you have tuna,” he continued before she could even remember the first part of his sentence to answer.  “Do you know that ‘tuna fish’ is redundant?  Tuna is fish and fish is fish, so it’s like you’re saying ‘fish fish’ HA!” He cackled.   “Redundant means ‘with the same meaning as a word used elsewhere in a passage and without a rhetorical purpose’”
Jenny looked down at her own fish fish sandwich and questioned why a kid would use the word “redundant”, yet she found herself stashing the definition away to use later.
“You don’t talk very much,” Alex observed.  “Are you shy because you are the new kid?  I’ve gone to this school basically my whole life.  I mean not as a baby because duh babies don’t go to school.  But since Pre-K. And my both of my brothers went here.  Do you have brothers or sisters?”
“A brother,” Jenny was finally able to answer.
“Is he smart or dumb?”
Jenny wasn’t quite sure how to answer the question.  He was dumb in the sense of being a stupid older mean jerk brother, but he always helped her with her math homework because he was good at it.  So mean, yes.  Dumb, no.
“He’s pretty smart.  He helps with my math homework.”
“Math is ok.  I really like reading though.  Obviously.”
He smiled at her and she smiled back, no longer worried or afraid the Madison’s were watching.   Jenny even felt comfortable enough to pull her copy of the Dork Diaries out of her lunch bag.

“We’re going to be best friends,” Alex remarked after a few minutes of fish fish sandwich munching in silence.
Jenny nodded in agreement.