Elephant Game!

I don’t remember much from my early childhood but I have a few memories from then. This was in grade 1 I think. The teacher wanted us, the 15 or 20 kids in the class, to play a game where we pretended to be elephants. We were to form a circle and take the hands of those closest to us while we used our arms as a nose and a tail. One hand in front of us with our shoulder to our nose as the elephant trunk and the other behind us between our legs as the tail. During my childhood, before and after this, I always listened to teachers. I even did the extra stuff that they lied about us having to do. This game crossed a line for me. Taking another’s hand that was near their butt with my face way closer than I’d like and them taking mine. I didn’t like being touched and this was a new level of uncomfortable. I refused to play. The teacher threatened to punish me if I didn’t. I didn’t care. Not that time. I feared being physically forced to play. Luckily, I was simply punished and had to stay inside for recess. I remember this one guy from my class whose name I can’t remember which is a shame. I just recall a Hebrew name starting with that hard ‘h’ sound (that’s assuming I remember correctly). He pretended to need the bathroom to come see me to make me feel better. He stood in the hall and spoke to me a little. Every now and then, I think of him and I hope he kept being awesome and he’s out there happy. He really changed that day for me. Disobeying a teacher even to protect myself was a big deal for me and I doubted myself and felt wrong for it but his actions made me feel like what I did had been okay.