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My name is Andrew Tate and this is season 10 episode 11

of Let's Not Meet a True Horror Podcast.

Let's Not Meet Stories at gmail.com.

Right before I started sixth grade, my family moved for a third time, meaning I would be starting at another new school.

I'm a pretty extreme introvert, so I can't begin to describe the level of anxiety I was internalizing at the thought of my first day.

My sister is four years older than me, so we were never really in the same school building. This didn't help.

I didn't even have that small comfort of having her around.

To make matters worse, both schools I attended previously were small, with maybe 75 kids total in my grade.

The new school that I would be attending had over 500 students in my class alone.

The only silver lining was that I was beginning middle school, and my class would be a mix of kids from six different elementary schools, so in a sense, everyone was new.

During our first year in this town, my family rented a small townhouse while they waited for our previous home to sell.

This group of townhomes was off a busy six lane road. To reach it, you had to go down a slightly curvy road between two sections of trees giving the development a buffer from the hustle of the main road.

I also had to walk this road daily just to reach the bus stop as the bus didn't even enter the development.

It was about a quarter of a mile walk due to the road's curvature. I wasn't visible for part of the walk from the main road or the housing development.

It's hard to say which would be the most terrifying on that first day of school, the idea of walking to the bus stop alone and then having to find a seat in a vehicle full of strangers.

Or the thought of walking to the bus stop with my mother when I was in sixth grade.

My fear of being alone won, so my mother walked with me to catch the bus.

Two boys were at the bus stop when we arrived, and my mother being extremely extroverted and completely oblivious to my embarrassment and anxiety, introduced us to each other.

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