Personal Narrative

I love living in a small town, it gives me a sense of guaranteed safety and simplicity.

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.

Tires squealed on black ice and the engine backfired as she swerved around a narrow edge of the cliff. Jennifer Lesniak is traveling from Wisconsin to Oregon in a six ton truck through treacherous mountains and endless plains. It was three days of almost non-stop driving, only being able to sleep when she gave the wheel to her husband. Just when she was about to give up she thought the extreme weather in Wisconsin and about why she was moving to Oregon in the first place. She carried on willed by the warmer weather that awaited her on the west coast. The snow fell like ash from a volcano, building up on the road to the point where they had to get out of their truck and shovel the road clear. “Clearing the roads were extremely difficult” She said. “We were so close to the edge of this mountain standing on slippery ice trying to shovel the snow out of the road with little to no safety guard between us and the drop.”

Sitting in a hospital waiting room, alone, afraid; and waiting for the news; would she be ok? Would she even survive? My nerves were out of control; my heart was beating through my chest, you could literally see it thumping through my top. The beads of sweat racing down my forehead, as if I was in the middle of the Safari dessert. I have been an athlete my entire life, yet I have never felt so physically drained. I look around, my eyes opening, then closing; as if I am coming in and out of consciousness, then suddenly echoed words begin to ring around my ear drums….” Sir…...sir, can you hear me? Sir please, we need to know what happened. We need to know what happened to her. Maybe my motionless state showed my

At the beginning of my freshman year I was attempting to develop motivation as well as seeking purpose and determining value. Whether in school or during sports or other activities and events in my life, I was constantly searching for motivation towards a goal or achievement.

Were I to name one thing unique about me, it would be that I’m one of the only people I know who can say from experience which is more difficult; writing a personal essay or surviving a life-or-death, take-no-prisoners spy shootout, complete with a crowd of bad guys, laser guns, and of course, a hero and a sidekick. I’m the sidekick.

Grudgingly, I packed my track bag with everything I’d need: my trustworthy Nike’s, a water bottle, and a granola bar for after the race. I opened the door and a cool breeze greeted me. I took a deep breath of the cool and refreshing autumn air. Walking to the car door, each step became more treacherous and stressful than the last. When I finally got into the car, I slunk down into my seat. We hadn’t even left the driveway and already my nerves had turned me into a stress soup. The ride to Poolesville was excruciating. I spent the duration of the trip staring out the front windshield watching the endless fields of corn whiz by. When we arrived in town, a strange and unfamiliar feeling of calm washed over me. I’m not sure quite why I felt this way, but my stress seemed to evaporate as soon as we arrived. We drove through the endless sea of cars and were lucky enough to find a spot in the high school parking lot.

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.

I felt the tears push against my eyelids, threatening to spill onto my cheeks. The deep breaths that were supposed to calm me down were not working in the slightest and I wanted nothing more than to hide under something, anything, and avoid all responsibility for a while. Through blurred vision, I could barely make out the shocked faces of my friends. This was not supposed to happen here, in the middle of physics class. This was the kind of thing that a person should save for being safely hidden behind closed doors. I glanced down at the four little words on my phone and lost it. The floodgates opened. Hot tears turned my face into a network of rivers and lakes. The saltwater filled the dark bags under my eyes and turned them into oceans. Rivulets

I caused Greg to break his hand without any remorse at the time. Greg was a high school acquaintance who tended to bully me. He was significantly taller, stronger and more athletic; therefore physically bullying me wasn’t much effort for him. When I heard he was coming to work at the warehouse, I wasn’t particularly happy about it. The warehouse contained boxes from multiple suppliers. Some were really thick and some were really thin. They all contained books, though some were heavy text books while others were light weight paper backs. All workers with experience knew which boxes were heavy, which had thick soft cardboard as a box, and which were encased in thin cardboard. I waited until Greg stopped by with his working partner for

I woke up. Feeling groggy, I went to take my pills. Being the way my brain was, I needed pills to function. I see things, but others don’t see them. These things, they are right in front of my face, but they are not visible to other people. I could not find my pills, I looked everywhere, even in my drug stash. They were not there. Wait, I sold them to Angelo. Well, remembering this, I need to go to the drug store.

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.

Every year I go on my boat to various places. However this year was special because it was the year that my parents trusted me more. It was the year that I turned thirteen There is a law by which when an individual turns thirteen, they don’t have to wear life preservers anymore and they are allowed to drive small boats on their own. A little while back, I got my boater's license which allowed me to drive jet skis and engines above fifteen horsepower.

It was a rainy afternoon-turned-evening and I was faced with the struggle of rummaging up something to eat. I was alone, and cooking for one is never that exciting (to me), I find a sweet pleasure in cooking for others, witnessing their satisfaction with each bite as your sign of endearment. Before I lamented at the thought of cooking for myself, a recipe popped into my mind, shifting my thoughts to excitement. It's one that I'd been wanted to try and just so happened to be the perfect meal to brighten up this grey day, plus it was simple, like really simple.

A story shared with friends and relatives is when I shot my nine point buck. My dad and I were sitting behind some brush and were just about to leave. We heard something to the right and looked over and saw antlers. I pulled up my gun and shot. I missed. It ran off to about 100 yards away and stopped and looked back at us. By that time I had the gun reloaded and aimed above him and shot. I hit him. He ran off into the woods.