This morning I was sitting on the green leaf couch and remembered that I had a playdate with Marsh this afternoon. Yesterday, Marsh had called my mom asking if I had wanted to go on a playdate with him. I had said yes because I thought it was going to be fun. Marsh was a fun cayman; he told a lot of jokes and always was smiling and happy.
I was excited and nervous at the same time. This was my first playdate with Marsh ever. On the couch, I was thinking what if I accidentally tripped and fell into a puddle of mud? What if Marsh laughed at me? It was my first time to ever go on a playdate with Marsh. What if Marsh found it weird that I still watch Nature Cat? I buried my head into a pile of colorful blankets that were lime-green and lemon-yellow and kept worrying about what would happen. What if Marsh said he didn’t want to be my friend?
My mom called from the huge kitchen, “What’s wrong, honey?” and came to sit down next to me. I gave her a hug.
“It’s just, mom…” I said, “I’m really nervous about my playdate with Marsh this afternoon. What if I do something stupid in front of him?”
“Oh, honey,” my mom sighed. “Everyone worries. It’s okay to worry. I used to worry a lot about going to dinner with your dad. What kind of stuff are you worrying about?”
“Well,” I said, “I’m worried about stuff like what if Marsh doesn’t want to be my friend? Or what if he thought it was babyish that I still watch Nature Cat?”
“Well, Fern,” my mom said to me, “Marsh wouldn’t have agreed to the playdate if he didn’t want to be your friend. Also, if he’s a true friend, then he’ll care about you watching Nature Cat, but in a good way. He’ll think it’s interesting that you still watch it.”
“Maybe.” I looked at my mom. “I wanna go think in my bedroom for a little while.”
“Okay, honey,” my mom said. “Bye,” she added as I walked up the wooden stairs.
I went into my lavender room and flopped myself onto the green leopard-print bed and started to day-dream.
My dream was about how I went to Marsh’s playdate and everything bad I had thought came true. In my dream, Marsh was really mean and he did find it babyish that I still watched Nature Cat. He did laugh at me when I accidentally stepped into a mud puddle and he did not want to be my friend.
When I woke up a while later, it was time for me to go on the playdate. I felt worried that my dream would come true, but I still had to go because if I didn’t, Marsh would find it weird no matter what.
I got up and went to the bathroom. I started to comb my fur and polish my claws because I wanted to look good.
“Fern,” my mom called up the stairs. “Time to leave!”
“Okay, mom,” I called back down. I put down my wooden furbrush and raced down the stairs, careful to keep my claws in so they wouldn’t get dirty from the dust. My mom was waiting by the light brown wooden door.
“Fern,” she said. “Don’t forget your mudcastle toys. Marsh said he wanted you to bring them.”
“Okay, mom,” I said. I went into the garage from the back door and started looking for my mud toys. I forgot them because I was too busy getting ready. After about 3 minutes I found them and hurried back to the door.
“All right, honey,” my mom said. “Time to go.”
We started walking to a certain part of the forest that was paler than our part of the rainforest, and I remembered the way we went in case we got lost. I was walking fast because I didn’t want to be late, so I didn’t have a lot of time to remember a lot of landmarks, but I remembered a curly tree and a long overhanging branch that nearly touched my mom’s head. Soon we came to a medium-sized swamp. Marsh was swimming around inside it doing somersaults.
“Hey Fern,” he called. “Do you know why leopards are bad at hide and seek?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Because,” he said, “they’re always spotted! Get it???”
“Hah!” I laughed. “Good one!” I felt a little bit better.
“I see that you brought your mud castle toys. I suggested bringing the toys so that we could make a mud castle! Here, let me swim over to you,” Marsh said.
He ducked his head under the muddy swamp and soon resurfaced a few paws away from me.
“All right, Fern, this is how you make a mud castle. First we’re gonna find a flat, dry spot on the bank to make it. Then we’re gonna get the buckets and fill them up with mud. Then, we’ll get one bucket and empty it out on the flat space. It should stay as a mud castle. Then we wait for it to dry, and once it’s dry we’ll get more buckets and do it again and again and then we’ll make a huge mud castle that we can go into.”
“Um,” I meowed, “won’t my fur get dirty?”
And what about all the time I took to get it ready? I thought to myself.
“Oh sure,” Marsh said to me. “It’ll get really dirty!”
I looked at Marsh’s friendly smile and kind black eyes. I started to feel more comfortable with getting dirty because of Marsh’s comfortable mood. “You know what?” I purred, smiling, “Sure!”
I felt happy and relieved at the same time because my dream hadn’t come true. I also felt good because my mom’s advice had come true. Marsh wouldn’t care that I still watched nature cat and he wouldn’t laugh at me if I stepped into a mud puddle, because he liked me. He wanted to be my friend.
So Marsh and I built a bunch of beautiful mud castles, more mud castles than you could ever imagine. My favorite mud castle was one with three high towers, a big moat, teeny-tiny windows, a small door, and stick-figures of the king, queen, and two castle guards. I decorated it with a little grass flag. After we had finished building it, we played with the stick figures in it. I was the queen and one of the guards, and Marsh was the king and the other guard. We were protecting the castle from the villain, who was an imaginary stick-figure monkey. Even though we were just fighting the air with our stick figures, it was still fun. It made me feel confident in myself and brave.
We played and played until it was time to end the playdate. But it felt like only a few minutes had passed.
“Bye Marsh,” I called to him, waving. “See you soon!”
The walk back felt like it was way, way longer than the walk there. My mom and I didn’t talk on the way back because I was too busy thinking about how much I had enjoyed the playdate.
When we finally got back to our cozy wooden castle, my mom asked me, “So Fern, was it worth it going to Marsh’s playdate?”
“Definitely,” I said, smiling. I felt like I had never been this happy or relieved in my life.
The end.