preview

Personal Narrative-Changing

Decent Essays
Open Document

“The thing about perspective-changing events is that they usually don't announce themselves as such.” -Andrea Goeglein. For my family and me, there are few quotes that seem quite as true as this. We have learned all too well how one split-second can entirely change one’s perception of their life and the world around them. I know now how a seemingly awful event can be beneficial to the mindset of a person- how one occurrence can make everyone realize and appreciate the most important things in life.
On August 16th, 2009, I was in a car accident that was life changing. Earlier that day, my mother, sister, and I were visiting old friends in a neighboring town. In the evening, we drove back and the calm car ride lulled me to sleep. Suddenly, I was thrown against my seatbelt and opened my eyes to see the white mass of airbags in the front seat and smelt smoke filling the air. For a split second, my mother had fallen asleep. In that moment, our car had gone off the road and into a ditch where train tracks ran parallel to the street. She frantically unbuckled her seatbelt and shouted at my sister and me to get out of the car. I could feel the gravel shifting beneath us as the car slowly descended onto tracks. Still disoriented, we …show more content…

I didn’t want to interact with my family or peers and I developed a fear of cars. A month later, my English teacher gave us an assignment called “Two Minutes In Time” and told us to write a story in two minutes. While the majority of the class complained about the lack of time they had, I thought about the assignment and started to write. Two minutes…that’s how long it took for the train to hit my car. If we had been in that car for two more minutes, we would have died. I realized how transformative that short period of time could be. I wrote about my accident and about how every second of life counts. From that day on, I never took a minute of my life for

Get Access
Related
Get Access