The
Clubhouse
One night from his bed, in a nice little
neighborhood, in the nice little town of Golden Cove, Steve thought about all
his friends in the neighborhood, and all they’d been through. He was glad they
all got along better than ever before, but remembered that they hadn’t always.
The bunch of kids, who all called each other friend, lived in a neighborhood that
stretched for three city blocks. To name a few, there were Steve, and James,
and Mike, and Bryan, and Ricky, and Doug. They saw one another almost every day,
and played together often, because they all lived no more than a block away
from any of the others. They played basketball at Steve’s, they rode their
bikes together, and sometimes they all went to see Ricky and jumped with him on
his big trampoline. At one time or another, they had all been together at the
houses of each of these friends.
They did have some other friends, though, who lived
on the other end of the neighborhood, separated from them by several homes
where no kids lived. As Steve thought to himself, he could remember a time when
none of his everyday friends had all gone together to see these friends on the
other side of the neighborhood. All these kids knew one another, and each of
them would have probably said that all of these neighborhood kids were their
friends. They just didn’t get to see each other as often, at least away from school,
because they lived farther apart. This group of friends on the other side of
the neighborhood was a smaller one. There were only Billy, Arthur, and Cody.
As all of these neighborhood kids grew older, to
about seven years old, they began to notice things about one another that they
never had before. Steve and his closest friends began to notice that their
friends on the other side of the neighborhood didn’t have all the things they
had, like trampolines and basketball goals, and they didn’t always have things
that were as nice or new as theirs, like bikes and skateboards. Steve and his
friends noticed these things, but they didn’t think about them very often, and
they didn’t seem to think any of it made much of a difference. On the other
side of the neighborhood, though, Billy, Arthur, and Cody noticed these things,
too. More and more, each time they rode their bikes to the other side of the
neighborhood, they noticed that their bikes weren’t as cool as their other
friends’ bikes. They also began to notice more and more things that Steve, and
James, and the others had, but they didn’t, and they wanted them.
One night, just before dark, Arthur just couldn’t
take this anymore. It wasn’t fair. He really wanted a bike like Steve’s, and so
he decided to sneak over and take it. All he had at the time was a big-wheeled
scooter with leaky tires and stiff wheels that wouldn’t let it go very fast or
for very long without giving it another push with his foot. When he got to
Steve’s house, he didn’t see anyone hanging around, but realized that it would
be too hard, take too long, and be too risky to try to take his scooter and
Steve’s bike back home with him all by himself. So, he decided that it would be
easier to lean his scooter against Steve’s house, in Steve’s bike’s place, and
to take the bike home with him. He knew his scooter wasn’t much, but it eased
his guilty feeling to leave Steve with something, and it made the whole
operation easier. The next day, after realizing someone had traded him a
scooter for a bike without his permission; Steve began riding the scooter
through the neighborhood, from one end to the other, asking all the kids if
they had seen his bike or who had taken it. As he got to the other side of the
neighborhood, he finally had answers. Some kids he didn’t know told Steve they
had seen Arthur riding his bike. After realizing he hadn’t seen Arthur around,
it all began to make sense. When he got to Arthur’s house, there was Arthur
with the bike, looking guilty. He didn’t put up any fight, and traded the bike
back for his scooter.
Some time had passed since this happened, and Billy
remembered how much trouble Arthur had gotten in when his parents realized he
had taken another kid’s bike. Even though he was tempted to do the same thing
many times, Billy didn’t want to get into that kind of trouble, and knew that
Arthur would have been in even more trouble if Steve’s parents had called the
police when his bike had been stolen. By now, all these kids in the
neighborhood were between ten and twelve years old. Somehow, though, Billy
still couldn’t get over the fact that Steve, James, and the others had cooler
things. It still wasn’t fair.
One day Billy, Arthur, and Cody came from their
street down to the other side of the neighborhood. They could see all the other
kids gathering together in Steve’s back yard and climbing into a tree house
that they’d never seen before. They sat there by the curb watching for a few
minutes and started getting angry as they watched the last kid climb the rope
ladder up to the tree house and step inside. “Now they’ve got a tree house,
Billy!” said Arthur. “Yeah, I know,” Billy said. Cody said, “Let’s go over
there and climb the ladder.” “No,” Billy said. “I don’t think we’re invited,
and the other day, Steve and James were laughing at the bike Arthur and I
built.” Actually, Steve and James were just laughing because the bike was
unlike any other they had ever seen before, and laughing just came natural to
them. They actually thought that Billy’s and Arthur’s ‘chopper’ bike was pretty
epic, and if Steve and the others had known that Billy and the rest were there,
they would have invited them inside, but Billy, Arthur, and Cody just rode
away.
Well, Billy started getting even angrier every day,
even angrier than Arthur or Cody. “I’ve got to get them back, and make them
pay!” he thought to himself. Then, he thought of a plan. He knew that Doug
lived right in the middle of the neighborhood, out of sight from where all the
other kids lived, and he could use Doug to get back at those “stuck up” kids.
The next day, Billy took the short bike trip to where Doug lived and found him
in his front yard. “What’s goin’ on, Doug” Billy asked? “Oh, nothing much,
man,” said Doug. “Have you seen Steve’s tree house? You ought to go check it
out with us.” “No,” Billy said, “They actually told Arthur, and Cody, and me
that they didn’t want us in their ‘clubhouse,’ and that we weren’t part of
their club. They even told me that they didn’t really even want you over there,
but that they didn’t want to be rude and tell you to go away.” “What?” said
Doug, “Really? Are you sure?” “Yep, that’s what they told me.” “Who told you
that?” “Well, Steve and James, mainly,” said Billy. “That’s MESSED UP! That
makes me mad!” Doug said. “I know, me too,” said Billy. “I think we should
build our own clubhouse and start our own club.” “Alright, we will, and I don’t
care what those guys do. I’m going to give them a piece of my mind next time I
see them,” said Doug.
Now, Billy didn’t know that Doug was the real
carpenter of the friends from down the block, but Billy did know that Arthur’s
dad had lots of good lumber and other building materials in his tool shed, and
that they could use that to build their new clubhouse. After a couple of days,
Doug, Billy, Arthur, and Cody had built one awesome clubhouse in Arthur’s back
yard. It had a shingled roof, two rooms, and a wooden ladder leading up the
tree to the clubhouse door that was much better than Steve’s rope ladder.
By the third day since Steve, James, Mike, Bryan, or
Ricky had seen Doug; they began to wonder what had happened to him. Where was
he? They also realized it had been even longer since they had seen Billy,
Arthur, or Cody. Finally, they couldn’t take it anymore; they left Steve’s tree
house to go to that side of the neighborhood, where answers had been found
before. First, they stopped at Doug’s house where Doug’s dad told them he
wasn’t here, and that he was over at Arthur’s house with Arthur and Billy.
“Well, that was interesting,” they thought, and they set out for Arthur’s
house. When they got there, they saw the tree house in Arthur’s back yard from
the back gate. “Hey, Arthur, said Steve, That’s the coolest tree house I’ve
ever seen! Have you seen Doug around?” “This is a clubhouse, said Billy, and
it’s OUR clubhouse! Arthur don’t want you and your friends over here, and he
said that if you don’t get outta here real quick-like, he’s gonna come down
there and put a whoopin’ on all ‘o ya’ll!” “Wait, what?” said Arthur. “And he
and I don’t take kindly to you laughing at our bike, either” said Billy. “Yeah,
said Doug, and if you don’t want us in your clubhouse we don’t want you in
ours!” “What do you mean, said Steve? We’ve been wondering where you and Billy
and the rest were. I never said I didn’t want you in the clubhouse.” “Billy,
did Steve really tell you he didn’t want me at his house?” said Doug. Billy
said, “Well, not exactly, but…” “So you lied to me?” “Well, you make it sound
really bad when you put it like that.” “Listen, we want all of you to come over
to the house, and we think your bike is cool, too” said Steve. “Well…I guess we
could come over for a little bit” said Billy. “What do you think, Doug?” “Yeah,
that’ll work.”
As they all took the long trip to the other side of
the neighborhood, Mike said, “Hey Billy, it looks like you and Arthur need some
tires for that thing, and I think I have some extra tires and tubes that are
the same size as the rims on your bike there.” “Oh, really, said Billy? Alright.”
When they got to Steve’s house, Steve said, “Billy, our tree house is pretty
lame compared to yours, and if you and Arthur and Cody can help us fix up ours,
we can all start having meetings at both clubhouses on different days.” “O.K.,
alright,” they said, as the rest of the group nodded their heads to say yes.
Arthur said, “Yeah, we’ve still got plenty of materials left over to fix up
your tree house real good.” “Cool,” said Steve.
So, Arthur and Billy rode their bike to Arthur’s
house, with Arthur pumping Billy on the back, and they made three more trips
back and forth from Arthur’s to Steve’s, unloading lumber, and plywood, and
shingles, and hinges, and everything else you could imagine. Doug could work
wonders with all this good material, just as he had with the other tree house.
In the meantime, Mike had made a trip back home and came back to Steve’s with
two new tires and tubes that he and Billy put on Billy’s and Arthur’s bike. By
the time it started getting dark that evening, they all had another new and
improved clubhouse that looked a lot like the one that had been built at
Arthur’s house.
The next day, they all had their first club meeting
together at Steve’s, and it was decided that whenever they were able, and had
permission, they would all ride bikes together and trade out with each other any
time they wanted, as long as they each went home with their own bikes! They
also decided that at least twice a week they would all meet up at Arthur’s and
Steve’s clubhouses. As Steve thought all this over, he remembered that tomorrow
was the day to meet up at Arthur’s house, and he smiled before drifting off to
sleep. These good friends learned a good lesson that we should all learn: that
if we’ll look at each other as equals, keep talking to each other, and not be
afraid to share or to be different, we’ll all get along better, and we’ll all
be better off.
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