What is a lollipop moment? A lollipop moment is when somebody said or did something to you that you feel fundamentally made your life better. Most people have that moment in their lives that they think really impacted them as a person, and it changed their life. When my sister told me about the lollipop moment, it really made me think about if I have had many moments where someone really had an impact on my life. Then I thought of one, this is my lollipop moment.

It was during my 7th-grade year in 2020; I was 13-years-old and going to Boggle Middle School. I have always been a very shy person, mainly because I have a lot of anxiety, but certain situations can make me have anxiety attacks like this one. One day I walked into my English class and my teacher started talking about us doing a Socratic Seminar. If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically where you get into a big circle and you ask questions and say your thoughts on a book or text. This is every introvert’s nightmare. As soon as she said we would be doing one, I was flooded with anxiety.

She told us it would be on Friday, so we had a day to prepare. I got home and it was all I could think about – my mind flooded with hundreds of situations where this could go wrong. I was filled with massive stress because it was going to be graded as an assignment, and if you don’t participate, you won’t get credit. Eventually, Friday rolls around the corner and it was the period before English. Right when the bell rang to go to my English class, I sprinted to the bathroom where I started having an anxiety attack. It went on for about a minute or two until someone knocked on the bathroom stall. I opened the door and a girl with blonde hair rushed over to me and started trying to calm me down.

I told her why I was super nervous, and she told me something that really stuck with me. She said that almost everyone in my English class was probably also so scared to do this and that feeling this way is normal. Whenever I had to start participating in Socratic Seminars, I just thought about what she told me, and my anxiety diminished. This was my lollipop moment because not only did the girl help me to participate in the seminar, she also became my best friend. She has definitely made my life better, and I am so grateful that I have her as my best friend.