The Giant Forest - COMPLETED - True to life adventures of preteens.

Selfless or Selfish?

Everybody loved Sybil. At least that's what Sybil told himself.

"Of course, they love me. They join me for boba tea. They join me for cinnamon rolls at the coffee shop. They let me share my snacks with them at lunch time. They give me their cookies. They buy me cakes, too! Of course they love me."

Everybody loved Sybil. Except Sybil. Nobody ever sat alone to eat their school lunch if Sybil were around. Seems he had a nose and an appetite for people who were feeling lonely, needed a friend, an ear to bend or someone to just be nearby. That's what Sybil told himself.

If one of Sybil's friends had been ridiculed, backbitten or gossiped, EVERYONE knew that Sybil would never be in on it. Sybil was too nice a person to intentionally harm others. But his, um, friends and classmates didn't treat him the same as he treated them.

Sybil was, how do you say it politically correctly, gravitationally challenged. He was almost as big around as he was tall. If he didn't put his arms out to the sides when walking, you wouldn't know if he were walking or rolling. He had no visible legs to speak of. It seemed that his upper torso started at his ankles. Kids at school tormented him mercilessly because of his size and shape. Even so, Sybil always wore a brave face and laughed along not fully realizing that he was not laughing along at all. He was being laughed at.

Sybil wanted to think his friends were being kind to him when they teased him. He enjoyed the attention, attention that he didn't get at home. He genuinely couldn't imagine his friends were actually being cruel.

"Why would they be mean to me? I am always nice to them," he'd wonder to himself.

He had only the purest of intentions when he sat with them, bought them a lemon drop cookie or shared a strawberry milkshake ... is what he told himself. When his friends reciprocated by buying him another cheeseburger or a large box of extra crispy, extra oily fries, they really were just trying to increase his size even more, so they would have a never ending butt to their vicious barbs. Some people only feel good about themselves when they can make someone else feel worse than they do.

They couldn't, however, make Sybil feel worse. He loved his friends, would do anything for his friends, even sacrifice his own well being for his friends. He thought to himself, "It is better for everyone to make fun of me than to make fun of my friends, Aimi, Roci, Mousi and Sycamore ... "

Sybil's least favorite place to go, however, was the beach. All kids love the beach, right? Not Sybil. He hated the way he looked. Once when he was at the beach he heard the other kids yelling, "Throw the whale back into the sea!" He was quite excited to pitch in to save a sea animal until he realized they were all pointing and running towards him. The other kids laughed at him. Sybil smiled in return.

He had no idea what he should do about his size. His parents didn't help. He continued to remind himself, "After all, God loves you just the way you are." The preacher had said it the last Sunday and the Sunday before that ... and the Sunday before that. "If God loves me the way I am, how come I don't love the way I am?" Sybil thought to himself. Sybil was a jolly, even cheerful person on the outside. But his outward appearance didn't reflect how he felt in his heart of hearts. People don't always show how they are really feeling.

Sybil hoped to find an answer or at least be pointed in the direction of an answer at Mt Hermon camp. He wanted to know why he didn't love himself the way he told himself, the way that he thought his friends loved him.

Even he didn't find an answer at Mt Hermon, Sybil was happy to be going to camp with his supposed friends. Sycamore had never been unkind to him. Nor had Mousi. She was never unkind to anyone. Aimi and Roci had never been among the mean-spirited teasers. At least not yet they hadn't.