Needing Leadership

The whistle blew and I hopped the log fence to join the end of the line of girls of my second grade class. We were coming in from recess. Then, instead of leading us back into the building, one of the teachers stopped. "This field is a mess." As she spoke we looked back over our shoulders, and I acknowledged that only moments before I had noticed the Cheetos bags stuffed into crevices in the log fence, and smashed juice boxes and plastic straws were scattered over the grass.
"No one is allowed inside until we clean up this mess."
No one moved. Everyone shuffled their feet and stared at the ground hoping the angry teacher wasn't looking at them.  Well it's not my problem, I thought, feeling my own sandwich bags from my snack tucked into my pockets. To move would be to accept guilt.
The seconds stretched into minutes and still no one moved.
This is dumb, I thought, and broke ranks, blushing hard because everyone was staring. As I picked up a lollipop stick, the neat rows of my classmates disintegrated. I grabbed a fruit by the foot paper and carried my trash to the garbage, as the other kids darted around me from the trash barrel and then back to our neat lines.

I don't remember if the teacher even said anything else before she brought us back inside.
I find leadership interesting. Who is good at it and who is not? What makes good leaders or bad leaders? One of the main characters in the book I wrote has some issues directly related to leadership. Maybe I find it interesting, because I'm not much of a leader (except of course when I am).
This week I was at a very informal church activity. We were supposed to bring some cookies to some people but everyone just kept milling about asking who should go with who, and where we should leave our cars. Nothing was getting done. I called out, told everyone a plan, and people listened. One girl asked if I was sure, I said honestly "I don't care, I'm just making this up." But everyone promptly did what I had said. It was kind of funny in my opinion because I wasn't in charge, and I really didn't care much which plan we followed. But sometimes people just need a leader, like the first experience I shared, and it doesn't really seem to matter who it is, just as long as someone takes charge.
On occasion I've heard people talk about how leadership really isn't important or how you don't need to do what other people tell you to do.... but honestly, it seems to me that people, that society, needs leadership. It can be informal or formal but we need leaders, sometimes for even the most simple of endeavors.