Ted is the new kid at school, and he wants to make friends. At recess he approaches a group of smiling, laughing boys to introduce himself. But as he nears the group they get quiet. Ted says hi and his name, and mentions he's new and wants to know if they play "tag" here. The boys reply, "we don't play tag, we play Weasel Escape." Ted asks how to play, and they say "How do you not know how to play? You needlefish. Needlefish!" The other boys laugh, but Ted doesn't get the joke. They walk away and Ted feels embarrassed. Over the next few days he continues trying to befriend the group of boys but they have so many inside jokes! There's one nice kid in the group that explains the jokes to Ted, but most of the time one of the other boys loudly interrupts and teases Ted for not knowing, and nobody really enjoys standing around explaining things because standing around means not playing. Ted eventually decides that the boys he's been trying to befriend aren't very nice, and that even though he enjoys playing weasel escape now that he figured out the rules, it's less degrading to spend his recess in the library playing Magic cards with the weird kids. They actually seemed excited to explain their inside jokes and how the game works.
Nobody is keeping Ted out of that group of friends. He just largely prefers not to join them. But of course, why he prefers not to join them changes the story.
