Personal Narrative

It's a Friday afternoon, I plan to go to Great Wolf Lodge in an hour with my church. I see one of my friends so he says to his mom “ Hey, that's my friend” I said “Crap” So I go inside to sign in to go and see my friends just sitting in a corner on a big sofa. We are listening to music and just talking then a green bus comes.

I have lived in only one location my entire life: Edwardsville, Illinois. A peripheral suburb of St. Louis, it stands as the rare oasis of people in a desert of corn, pinned in its own personal bubble. Due to this blend of time and isolation, I developed a natural familiarity with my hometown. But, throughout my childhood, I longed to break free from the confines of the bubble and venture outward. However, this changed last summer, as I walked through Richards Brickyard, our family heirloom, that my great-grandfather, Benjamin Richards, founded over 120 years ago. I felt these childlike sentiments slip away. The bubble that had surrounded me for so long began to vanish, and the picture that it had been obscuring was slowly revealed.

It was near the end of my 8th grade school year, about 2 month away from graduation, when something I never expected to happen actually happened. This event really changed my life forever and shaped me into who I am as a person today. I had just arrived at my house after school when my parents received a call that my grandma was ill and that we should come down to check on her. As we rushed down to my grandparents house, my family was deeply concerned about what may have happened because my grandma had never really had many health issues before this. As we arrived at their house and walked through the door, we were greeted with the sight of my grandma sitting in a chair with a blanket around her while she was sleeping. My family’s first reaction

It is true in life that everything happens for a reason. It is also true to say that sometimes it is all about being in the right place, at the right time. There was never a more prominent example of this than a traumatic summers evening, only a few years ago.

In the beginning of third grade was so exciting because I will get to see my friends. But when I got home my parents told me and my brother that we are moving. I was really excited at first because it was my first time moving.

I arrived at practice with my shoes laced, hair pulled back, and the mindset that I was unstoppable. I could play against every member of my team and come out the victor on any given day. It was the first day of practice that week, and challenge matches were scheduled to begin. The team went through our daily shuffle of drills, conditioning, and running to prepare for what was lying ahead. While warming up with my friends, I felt great, talking about homecoming, boys, and a variety of irrelevant events. I felt ready. The odds were in my favor and nobody could stop me.

I like to beat the rush for lines and do not prefer being late, but

For the first ten years of my life, I had a very normal childhood. I went to a private catholic school in a small town called Westwego. We were about twenty five minutes south of New Orleans. During the summers, friends and family would come over to our house and we would all swim and boil seafood. The summer of 2005 was no different; I was looking forward to entering 5th grade. Fast forward to one week before school is about to start when Hurricane Katrina formed in the Atlantic Ocean. Hurricanes were no strangers to us as we have been through several throughout the years. However, a few days later the storm is upgraded to a Category 3 and is predicted to hit New Orleans dead on. My parents felt it was time for us to leave and we traveled

    It was six A.M. on a beautiful yet brisk Saturday morning and I was fast asleep. Suddenly I was ripped from my blissful dream world by the incessant blaring of my alarm. Groggy, I shut off the alarm and stumbled into the kitchen for breakfast. I had a light breakfast consisting of warm cinnamon toast and butter so as to not upset my stomach during the looming Cross Country race.

Hello, Dr. Taft, I look forward to another exciting semester with you, and my cohorts exploring my inner and outer world. Let’s start with my family constellations it begins with my stepmother, and my father, my older brother Steven along with myself. At the time, I did not know that Ann was my stepmother, and I did not find out until I was older, and she had two sons who lived in Arizona. A few years later her eldest son Tommy would come to live with us, and the life that we were accustomed to would change the outcome of all our lives.

At two in the morning seven years ago, my nine year old self was jolted awake by my mother. Begrudgingly, I peeled my eyes opened and tried to blink the sleep away.

“We don’t have anytime time to waste today guys, get moving!” my mom announced. My brother was coming today and she wanted the house to be spotless. We had just started fall break and I was in the fourth grade. I was playing games and relaxing like any 10 year old would do. My dad was lounging on the couch watching some show, and my siblings were running around. By then I had only 5 siblings, 2 sisters and 3 brothers. We had known for a while that Johnny, age 9 at the time, was coming to live with us, what we didn’t know was that he would bring with him a fish. I was happier than a child opening presents on Christmas. The fish was a beautiful white male betta with long flowing fins. He lived in a small 1 gallon tank with blue pebbles, pointy

I violently shiver as I stand near the stop sign, awaiting my morning bus. My stomach, which had been growling furiously since the afternoon before, is now quiet underneath the layers of jumpers I am casually wearing in sunny, 65 degree weather. Fingers trembling, I plug in the food I plan to eat later on in the day into my calorie counter app, my breath hitching as I realize that today is the start of a new life- a life towards recovery.

When I was younger, my uncles to joke about the fact that I was americanized; that I didn’t know how life really was back in the motherland. I would just laugh and tell them to leave me alone. Then, I saw what they meant when we went to Africa in 2009.

Racing at night going One-hundred and forty miles an hour on US-27 holding the lead, Shift six gear, speed topped out at two-hundred miles per hour passing by cars smoothly. I chanted I am immortal, I am a god! while I pushed my sports bike to its limit. Suddenly a black car approaches. WHAM! I get Rammed from behind and lose control of my bike slamming into a Semi-truck up ahead. Lights out. When I peeked my eyes, I saw 4 humans around me. Thump after thumb I believe I was in an ambulance rushing down the turnpike. I looked around and the first words that came to my head are “Rick this is just a dream”. This is the story of how I escaped from an illegal laboratory that clones and modifies humans.