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.

The wind chime hung from the roof of the abandoned house , it swayed calmly and slowly against the wind , everything seemed peaceful . We - my father and I - sat on the porch of the rundown house that only we knew about . It was dark and I wasn’t the biggest fan of the night , the night is unpredictable but yet so beautiful .

The most important game of the year was coming up and I was ready. Everything was going perfect for me, because I was the starting QB as a freshmen at Englert High School. We were playing Joston High School the number 1 team in the nation since 1960, it was going to be a tough game because they had the number 1 ranked defense, but we had the best offense. The day before the game was just a normal day I went to school and had football practice after school. A couple weeks ago one of the other teams that we had played earlier in the year wanted another game so we decided to play them. They had been the hardest team we had played all year, we had only beat them by a last efforts field goal it hardly went in as it bounced in off the crossbar.

A sudden emptiness seemed to flow from the sweltering air and into our thoughts. The drive back from New York felt hauntingly isolated. Uncomfortable silence filled the yellow car. The silence was only to be broken by warm air whistling as Daisy’s white dress swooshed around through the gentle breeze.

It was a hot sweltering Saturday in August, August twenty-seventh to be exact. I remember waking up that morning with my stomach in knots we were to play the Hot Springs Bison. Sure, I played JV last year and practiced all summer with the first team but now all the hot god awful gut ranching two a day practices were about to pay off.

In late September of 2010, was the year I learned a new word “Depression”! I was in 1st grade and everything was fun because I had no responsibilities or worries. I didn’t know how to feel grief for a long time because I was always happy. I didn’t know that a family member could own a child.

Every student is excited when school starts. New classes, new backpacks, new clothes, and seeing all your friends is a part of this excitement. The first few weeks are new; no homework, plenty of free time, etc. But after two or three months, school isn’t cool anymore. The homework piles up, the tests are being printed, but how much stress can you take before it’s too much?

I was not an intentionally bigoted twelve-year-old. I was raised in an affluent suburban community where the vast majority of people are white. The 100% white private nursery school which I attended was chosen by my parents largely due to its proximity to our home. My public elementary school was about 70% white as it was populated with students who resided nearby. Finally, the private middle school which I attended, located almost an hour from my home, provided me with exposure to the most diverse student body of my youth as it was comprised of about 65% Caucasian children. What each of these formative academic experiences shared in common was both that their student bodies were disproportionately Caucasian, as well as that their senior administrators

It was one of those oddities; though identical twins, they had celebrated different birthdays: first, Molly, born on April 1, 1972, at 11:47 PM, and second came Megan on April 2 at 12:17 AM. Their parents, Meryl and Bill, thought it best that the twins celebrate on their own days and had always held separate parties for them. Bill adored “his girls,” and Megan was probably his favorite. A parent shouldn’t have a favorite child, yet, they all, more than likely do. It’s either the one that they’ve carried some sort of guilt about, for one reason or another, or the one that highly reminds them of themselves. In Bill’s case, it was definitely Megan, he enjoyed her spunk (a quality he thought missing from the other two children). It was his attraction to her high-spiritedness that had Meryl, on countless occasions telling him; “You are letting her get away with

Like the beginning of every good soap opera, everything was normal in the beginning. I lived with my mom and it had just been us for my entire life. My mom had began to see a man. As it turns out, this man would take our happy and simple world and flip it upside down.

If you were to ask me why I love running the hurdles you would probably expect to hear this long story about this life changing event that happened to me which made me love running, but that’s not the case. In high school I was on the shuttle hurdle team, I wasn’t the best nor the worst, but I was the most motivated. Everyday I went to practice and pushed myself to the point were my coach would make me stop. I wasn’t motivated to be the best nor to win every race. I was motivated by the thought of going to state or even winning state.

It was a normal chilly sunday on September 13th, 2015. My dad was in the garage with some of his friends watching the football game. It was the Dallas Cowboys vs. the New York Giants. My dad and his friends were making hot dogs and burgers on the grill but I don’t like those so I asked my dad if I could go to the store and get the ingredients to make taco dip. He handed me $20 and I headed off to the store with one of my dad’s friend’s son. The store was at the end of my street so it wasn’t a far walk.

My life began in Manhattan, New York in January of the year 1977. I was born to a 21 year old Irish American mother, Catherine Cunningham, and a 60 year old Sicilian American father, Anthony Perniciaro. My parents came from very different backgrounds. My mother’s family was relatively wealthy and affluent. My father was born and raised in Brooklyn. His parents were extremely poor immigrants that were seriously affected by the Great Depression. My father was a bricklayer and an artist when he met my mother, who was just starting her life, being only a few years out of high school.

My day starts out like most of a dollar’s day starts. As I rest in my owners wallet. He grabs his wallet and slides it in his back right-hand pocket, with me included. This is how my journey begins.

I felt as if I was roughly about 30 feet up. I glanced back down again thinking that I was never going to be able to do it. Little did I know that the breeze was a little strong up here. The gush was a little harder than I expected and I went flying of the rock into the water. My heart must have been beating about a mile a minute as my stomach lifted up into my throat. I let out a tiny scream before I hit the water. I gasped when I came up for air, my family cheering for me.