The Garage

           The icy wind collides with the warm skin of my 12-year-old face as I open the side door of our house. It’s a very cold winter day here in Marion. After closing the door, making sure it’s latched, I turn and direct my steps toward the garage, a wooden building with white paint chipping off the siding, that has been here as long as the old house itself. There are two halves to this garage: the half to the right holds the lawn mower, gardening equipment, and old Craftsman tools; to the left, a newly renovated room, with walls painted red and a stained concrete floor, made to be a multi-purpose room. Its purpose today: band rehearsal. I head through the smaller door to the left, and shut it quickly once I’m inside, making sure I keep the cold out. I walk to the far corner of the room and plug in a small portable heater, turning it to its highest setting. In only an hour, a brand new band, formed by several of my friends, will begin its first rehearsal. I have been looking forward to it all week, and I have no doubt that we will be a huge success.

            It has been slightly over two years since the failed attempt of forming a successful band, and the only conversation about the subject is about how crazy we were. Since then, the garage has been transformed from a “band studio” to a cool place for my friends, Cole and Tanner, and I to hang out. The summer heat is beating down on Cole and me as we make our way to the garage from a trip to our local dollar store, Family Dollar, where we have just discovered a new beverage that we just had to try: a Mexican Coca Cola. We run into the garage and shut the door quickly, trying to keep the cool air in, and the hot air out. I walk to the far corner of the room to the air conditioner window unit, pressing the arrow pointed down, dropping the air temperature to 66°. Reaching into the cabinet, I pull out a bottle opener, which I borrowed from the kitchen. I took the glass bottle in my hand, feeling the cool condensation on the smooth surface. As I opened the bottle, the crack and fizzzzz made our mouths water, longing to taste the refreshing beverage. We take a sip. At the same time, we both look at each other, wide-eyed and excited about, and know that we are thinking the same thing: “This is the greatest soda I’ve ever had!” 

            “These are incredible!” Cole exclaims, after taking another sip.

            “I would be up for one of these every day of the summer!” I respond.

            To that, he replies, “That sounds like a plan to me!”

            Cole, Tanner, and I walk in the garage and take a seat in lawn chairs set up to form a circle in the middle of the room. We look up at the shelf full of glass Coca Cola bottles, all of which had once been filled with delicious Mexican soda, all of which we drank.

            “There has to be at least a hundred bottles on that shelf!” Tanner says in awe.

            “Well in just a minute, there will be one hundred and three!” I reply. Today, not only do we have ice cold, refreshing Mexican Coca Colas, but we also have a side of Pixie Stix to accompany the soda. About twenty Pixie Stix later, we are all wired and high on sugar. As the conversation continues, I make a comment that Cole, for some reason, finds hilarious. So, laughing hysterically, he picks up the lawn chair next to him, and tosses it. After hanging in the air for what seems like an eternity, it collides with the wall, creating a decently sized hole in the sheetrock.

            “Cole! What the heck did you just do?”

            “I didn’t think it’d put a hole in the wall!” He argues. But the mood was too light for me to get too angry, and we had all had too many Pixie Stix, so we just continued to laugh.

            “Happy birthday, Wyly! You’re finally 15!” Tanner says, jokingly, as he walks through the door of the garage.

            “Thank ya, Tanner! Come on in! We’ve got some orange Crush in here if ya want some!”

            Tanner shuts the garage door, and takes a seat in the lawn chair.

            “Hey, Pip! How’s it going?” He says to our friend, Philip, whom he sits next to. He then looks across the circle saying, “It’s good to see you again, Natalie!”

            “Same to you, Tanner!” replies my girlfriend. It has been four months today that she and I have been together, and she has gotten to know my friends very well, and vice versa, which gladdens me.

            We continue to converse, and as we do, I take a second to look around at all my friends, Cole, Tanner, Pip, Natalie, Hailey, and Gabe, all having a good a good time listening to music and hanging out with each other in this garage. Even though it might not seem like much of a building, I realize now how much it means to me. The countless memories I have with my friends in this place are priceless, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. To put it simply: I love this place.

           

            My sister and I race each other out the side door, running toward the old run down garage.

            “I beat you!” I exclaim, like the 10 year old I am. I open the door, and we both walk in. My mother is up on a step-ladder, painting the higher parts of the wall, while my dad is on the floor nailing on the finishing piece of trim.

            “We’re not quite finished yet, kids. You’ll have to wait a few more days.” Dad says.

            “Awwwwww,” My sister and I say simultaneously. “Okay”

            “So what do y’all want to do with this room when it is finished?” Mom asks me.

            “I don’t know,” I say. “But I know I’m going to love this place!”

Reading History of a Current Non-Reader

                  As a child, reading was one of my favorite pass times. I read a wide variety of books; it was hard to count the number of books I read! From when I started, I went on a steep incline, reading more and more as time went on. However, I hit a climax, and my reading began to decline from there.
                  My reading history began as a toddler, around the age of three years. Every night before bed, my mother would read a short children's book to me. After a while of me just listening to the story, she decided it was about time for me to read some of it myself; so I did. I could not read the whole story on my own at first (I needed some help), but over time, I could read the short stories independently. This was just the start of my reading.
                  By the time I was in first grade, around the age of six, I was reading small children's novels with little to no help. All through first and second grade, my absolute favorite books were the Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne. Once I was introduced to the first book, I was hooked. I read nearly every Magic Tree House novel ever written (at the time). I thought I couldn't find a better group of books.
                  When I was introduced to "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J. K. Rowling, my love for the Magic Tree House books was over; I moved on quickly. For the next several years, I read every Harry Potter book and became a huge fan of the series. I loved the books so much that I read some of them more than once! I also went to the midnight opening of the seventh and final book in the series, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." Once I finished this novel, Harry Potter was over, and my reading began to decline.
                  I still read after the end of the magical series, but the amount of books and frequency of my reading decreased, and started on downhill slope. Our school's reading program, A.R. (Accelerated Reading), began to be counted as a grade in middle school, which added a tremendous amount of stress to reading. Students would have to struggle to read a certain amount of books on a certain reading level in a certain amount of time, and if they didn't achieve their goal, the did not recieve a good grade. On top of that, the advanced reading class, of which I was a part, began to have reading assignments over the summer. We had to read books and short stories, such as "Sleepy Hollow" and "Silas Marner", that bored us all to death.
                  Over the next few years of having no fun whatsoever when reading, I slowly, but surely, came to a  point where I read no more. I read some things, such as newspapers (mainly the sports section), but I currently will only read books when I have to for school; otherwise, I have no interest in it.

I Am

I am musical and friendly

I wonder how things would change if I had never been born

I hear musical notes in my head

I see me in a good future

I want to be the best person I can be

I am musical and friendly

I pretend not to care

I feel happy, yet sometimes lonely

I touch the sky in my dreams

I worry that I'm not half the man I'm expected to be

I cry at the thought of losing a loved one

I understand that people make mistakes

I say that God forgives those mistakes

I dream of the future

I try to make the grades

I hope that I have a great life ahead of me

I am musical and friendly

The Amazing Transformation

                As the tale of "The Most Handsome Drowned Man in the World" comes to a end, the final section describes the view that passing ships have of the beautiful village on the shore, now known as Esteban's Village. However, this village was not near as beautiful in the earlier sections of the story. It was not such an appealing village. The small town went through an amazing transformation over the course of the story, and I believe that the town underwent this change because of one thing: a recent guest in their village. This guest was the most handsome drowned man in the world, who the villagers affectionately named Esteban.
                When the mysterious floating figure was seen drifting through the ocean waves, things began to change for the small seaside community. As the figure finally washed to the shore, the people identified it as a dead and abnormally large man. Aside from his size, there was something very different about this man. To both the men and the women, he was thought of as the most perfect man they had ever laid eyes on. They took him in, and after the women came and worked together to clean him and make clothes for him, the men prepared a grand funeral for Esteban. During the funeral, as soon as they lowered him into the ground, there was immediate mutual sadness among everyone there. They missed Esteban, as they piled the dirt into the grave. They would never find a more perfect man to reside in their village. However, although Esteban's body was gone, his spirit lived on.
                Esteban and his spirit had united the villagers. The women had come together to clean and clothe him, the men had worked together to bury him respectfully, and the whole town united to weep for him as he was lowered into the earth. And even after Esteban's burial, they did things out of respect for the spirit of their deceased friend that brought extreme improvements to the town. They expanded their doorways and reenforced their floors so that the spirit could comfortably come into their homes. They planted flowers throughout the village, and dug for natural springs among the rocks. They painted their houses in lively colors, and, finally, renamed the village Esteban's Village. The village had transformed. The small depressing town on the shore had become a completely new village.
                The village had been blessed by the short presence of Esteban; he not only transformed their village, but he united the villagers like never before.



http://www.cardinalhayes.org/ourpages/auto/2006/8/22/1156300239992/The%20Handsomest%20Drowned%20Man%20in%20the%20World%20Text.pdf