Standing on my porch for the last time in
a long time, I began to reminisce on the wonderful things that happened on the
green grass of my backyard. All of the wiffleball and badminton games, all of the
water balloon fights, they were all going to temporarily go away as soon as I
left for college a thousand miles away.
As I looked around, trying to find the
memories, I looked upon the only abnormality on the lawn. It was brown, and
round on the top. It looked like it was elevating in the air, until I noticed a
long and narrow stem attached to the ground that kept this half-sphere above
the surface. It seemed odd to me.
I had seen things similar to this before, but
I had never remembered seeing it on my yard. Living here for fifteen years, it
seemed like I would have noticed it before. But I just couldn't recall that it
was ever there.
I asked my mom how long I had before I had
to leave, and she replied that I had only a few minutes before I needed to
depart for Florida. So, I walked off the porch, and sprinted across the lawn,
toward this interesting object. From a distance, it seemed rather minuscule, but as I approached it, it grew and grew until I saw that it was more the size
of the wiffleballs that scattered the grass for years. I reached down, and I touched
it. It had the smoothness of the round tips of badminton birdies that used to
fly around on the days filled with the shining sun. Finally, I decided to pick
it up, with the delicateness I had picked up water balloons in the summers, and
I stuck it in my pocket, to remember my home and everything that was a part of
it. I walked back onto the porch, turned around to scan the yard one final
time, and walked inside, and eventually I left for the airport.
And
to this day, I carry that object with me wherever I go.
#2) Happy Dog
After twenty minutes, the rain started to
fall on me and my dog. Her fur began to fill with this water from the sky and
was shivering because of it. With both of us completely soaked, I decided that
we end our walk and head back home. Grabbing on to her leash tightly, I turned
my dog in the opposite direction and started for home.
We turned to the right into the driveway,
and we made our trek up it toward the house. The trees protected us from the
rain, so we stayed outside and played on the driveway. Grasping a tennis ball
from my pocket, I took it out and threw it into the front yard. My beautiful
lab sprinted towards the ball, opened her mouth, used that mouth to capture it,
and sprinted back, placing the ball in front of me. From past experiences, I
knew that this action was a sign for me to throw the ball again. I threw it
seven more times, until she continued to hold the ball in her mouth and sat
down next to my feet. I knew now that it was time to go inside. But then, she
heard a noise.
The dog jumped up and dropped the ball from
her mouth. I stared at her to see what the matter was, and I saw her turn her
head to the left. I turned my head to the right to look at what she saw.
Just as I turned my head, a car pulled
into the driveway. Not just any car, however. It was a car that my dog and I
have seen for many years. The car stopped right in front of us, and my mom
stepped out of the driver's side of the gray Camry that pulled in. Wagging her
tail and panting to show her excitement, my dog ran towards my mom and jumped
up onto her legs. I thought that my dog had been happy before, but I had never
seen her so happy than when my mom hopped out of that car.
#3) Coming Home
About every two months, with school in my rear-view mirror,
even if just for a day or two, I come home to the same scrumptious scene.
A two hour drive from rural New Hampshire brings me back to
my home I had lived in for nineteen years, 231 Reginald Avenue in Haverhill. I
park parallel to the road to the left of me, and I turn right to stare at it.
Just looking at the house makes me ecstatic to be home again. I check for cars
on the road, open the door slowly for extra caution, and then I jump out of the
driver’s side door and sprint behind the trunk so I almost guarantee that I do not
get hit. I unlock the trunk with the turn of a key, and it flies open,
revealing the gym bag containing all of my clothes and eyewear for the weekend.
I grab the strap with my right hand, then take the bag out and wrap the strap
around my shoulder. I close the trunk with my left hand, and then lock the car.
After checking that the entire car is secure, I turn again toward the home.
I look at the five steep, cement steps that lead to the
front door. I remember that I cracked the corner of the fourth one when I smashed
a hammer into it at age 9, so now it looks crooked from the bottom of the
flight. I remember all of the days I got off the school bus and walked up these
stairs, anticipating what the afternoon would bring. After staring at the
steps, I look up slightly.
I look at the front of my childhood home. I remember the
small, but fun, Thanksgiving football games that were played in my undersized
front yard. I remember all of the reading I did on the lawn when my sister had
the TV on too loud inside. I remember painting the house white one afternoon because
my mom just thought it needed something new; and staring up at it at any time-
in the rains of April or the sun of July or the snow of December, I knew that
she made the right choice.
I walk up the stairs, through the yard, up more steps to the
front door, and I ring the doorbell, always using my left index finger. And
every time, I sit there, waiting for someone to answer the door, and it takes only a second to get excited about seeing my family again.
#4) His Last Beach Day (TEST)
September 3rd, 2012, a day that will live in infamy, at least for Tommy.
Holly and Tommy, instead of staying home and having a
cookout, always went to the beach on Labor Day. They had done this every year
since they had gotten married over six years ago. So on this day, they packed
their beach equipment-towels, chairs, umbrellas, drink coolers- in the back of
their green sedan, and they drove the hour and a half drive to Hyannis.
Once they arrived in the town, they parked their car a half
mile away from the main beach, grabbed their stuff, and began walking on the
right sidewalk toward the ocean. Walking down the sidewalk, something felt
strange to Tommy. The ground felt like it was shaking under him, although there
was no earthquake anywhere on that day. The buildings felt like they were going
to collapse on him and his wife, although none of them have not or will not
collapse for another seventy-five years. Tommy felt so frightened that he
grabbed Holly’s left arm and picked up their speed to get out of he thought as
a horror town.
When they got to the main parking lot of the beach, they
turned east and walked down a cement path to their “secret beach” where nobody
else would go to swim and relax. As they
walked, the beach continued to get farther and farther away from them as the
couple ascended up the cliffs. Reaching the top of the cliffs, the couple
turned to a sign that reinforced the danger of where they were going. It read:
“Danger, Sliding Cliffs, Keep Back.” But they had never and would not keep back
from the cliffs.
Tommy and Holly found their spot. Throwing their beach
things over the cliff, they fell onto the tan sand below. Now they were ready
to jump onto the beach. Holly moved left of the things, and with her large,
strong legs, jumped over the cliffs, falling almost seventeen feet, and landing
on her size eight feet like a gymnastics champion. Now it was Tommy’s turn. He,
using the balls of his size twelve feet flew from the rocky plateau, flowing
through the air the same way as his spouse did a minute earlier, but a little
closer to the Atlantic. And instead of landing on his feet, like he had done
for the past five years, he thought it would be funny to land like a cannonball
in the ocean. But unlike a cannonball in the ocean, Tommy landed on his back
and blacked out.
When Tommy woke two days later, room 241 of Mass General was
the only thing he saw. A doctor walked in, and told him everything. He told
them about the immediate response to the beach. He told them about the hours of
surgery just to keep him alive. And in the end, he told him about how he can
never use his legs again.
#5) The Voice (TEST)
I had been walking for about a mile, just admiring the unique
scene that this new country presented to me. The unfamiliar architecture that
was worn by these century-old buildings, the confusing language that was spoken
by these fascinating people, it seemed so odd to me. Sure, I loved living here
for the past month, but I could still not understand anything that went on
here. And worst of all, I had nobody to talk to: international phone calls were
much too expensive, letters took much too long to write, mail, and receive, and
I could not talk to anybody without getting the weirdest looks imaginable. I
was lonely, very lonely, in this brand new world, and I wasn’t sure if I could
stand it for the next year.
As I kept walking, I wandered into a new place that I had
never been since I arrived. To my left was the light blue sea that I had looked
upon many times before. But to my right, I stared into a long and narrow
alleyway. In this alley, I could see many doors on both sides, which I assumed
to be doors to people’s houses. So, I turned my body to where my eyes were
looking, and I began to walk down this narrow road.
Just a few meters after I entered, I heard a noise from one
of the doors. It seemed like a scream, so I ran to the noise to see what was
going on. The noise kept getting louder and louder as I got closer and closer
to the noise. As I neared it even more, it stopped sounding like a scream, and
I could pick out words that were being spoken in a loud manner:
“Hello?
Hello? Is anybody there?”
Those were the first words of English I had heard since I
arrived. Hoping it was someone I could actually communicate with, I picked up
speed and sprinted to the noise as fast as Usain Bolt in the Olympics. When I
arrived at what I thought was the door where the voice originated, I stared at
it for a moment. It had a lot of scratches on its oak-colored frame. Seeing
there could be trouble inside the house, I opened the door.
Boston has progressed greatly over the years.
First, it was land and nothing else. Rolling hills, green summers,
white winters, nobody living anywhere near.
Then came the Native Americans with their basic technologies.
They had spears for their hunting of deer and duck and fishing for bass and tuna.
They had one room huts made of long branches to live in that were much smaller
than the hills that surrounded them. They grew together as a group and relied
on each other to survive the hot, humid summers and the cold, killing winter.
Years flew by until everything changed.
The year sixteen-twenty was when Plymouth is claimed, and
ten years later, the same occurred to Boston. These Puritans smashed the
inhabitants of hundreds of years before, and they took over everything that had
been there earlier. Guns had arrived with the capability of killing anyone and
anything. Families lived in wooden, multi-room homes, still not the size of the
mounds of soil they are put on top of. The people were brought together by religion
and family values. The “City Upon a Hill” had been born.
Wood was replaced with stone and brick, and the buildings
began to inch taller and taller. Floors instead of floor, baths instead of
bath. People wanted more, and they were getting it, and lots of it. But then they
wanted even more than that. And when demand was at its highest, there came
steel. A more potent material, the city started to fly above the hills that
have captured the city for years. Low-to-the-ground houses became sky-high
apartments and hotels. Tens of feet above the earth became hundreds and
hundreds. Skyscrapers became the norm in the city.
Today, it is more of the same from a hundred years ago. When
I look up, I stare upon buildings higher into the air that anybody would
imagine at the beginning of this city’s history. Some square, some circular,
some with analog clocks, some with narrow bars rising above it, but all had lights
flashing through the windows when the sun came down. The city is powerful, very
powerful, a lot more powerful than it was when it was long, green grass and
flowing hills on the coast.
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