This blog was set up for my English class, so I will be posting and have posted many stories. Anyone can feel free to comment as I want to make my stories the best they can be, and I can only do that with the help of people commenting and offering advice. On my blog, read one of my stories (or all of them if you'd like), then post a comment on anything you noticed in the story. ie. If I did a wonderful job, if I used the wrong word in a sentence, if my story layout needs to be improved, etc. Please provide advice so I can continue to increase my writing a ability, and my grade for that matter. Thanks errrybody who reads my posts.

The House of Grands

                As a kid, and still today, one of the most significant places to me is the house of my grandmother, this house is awesome. The house is rather small, though big enough for a family of seven. The house maintains its 1950’s look with its rust colored carpet, brick structure, hardwood, and light blue painted walls. Now the house looks a bit more modern with its wood cabinets and a pointed roof rather than a flat surface. This house has grown along with the people who have lived in it for the past fifty years.

                The house is a two leveled, skinny house. It is much deeper than it is tall giving it a ‘Harry Potter’ type feel where it is bigger on the inside than it looks from the outside. The house consists of six total rooms, one being where my late grandpa kept all of his possessions and remained a constant source of mystery for me growing up. Its dark, unfinished basement always sent me flying up the stairs as I imagined something from the basement’s depths chasing.

                Outside the house is where I spent most of my time, playing with cousins and siblings. Adjacent to the house is a monstrous chestnut tree where the spiked shells of the walnuts became so big they were always in danger of falling. I cannot count the amount of times I was told to be careful under that tree because of the spiked ‘death from above’ literally looming over me. Behind the house is the oldest trampoline I have ever seen, its once blue frame now almost completely rusted and I bottom it out the moment I sit on it. Next to the tramp is a small playhouse meant for all of the younger grandchildren, next to that are scooters from what I would imaging would be the seventies. The tires for the scooter have to be pumped up; it is like riding a rather large bike with no seat, pedals, or frame. Then there is the sandbox with the grape vine overhanging, each and every time I go back to the sandbox I check to see if the grapes are in season and take a few if I am lucky enough.

                This house has seen its use whether it is used for family parties or the place where my beloved grandpa drew his last breath. This house has too many emotional ties to be moved out of. This house has seen it all. It has seen births, it has seen deaths, and it has seen the life in between moving at its slow pace. This house has always been a place of comfort for me. Each time I enter this house I know I will be greeted by my grandma who isn’t the stereotypical ‘bring you cookies type’, but more of a ‘I am always, ALWAYS, stocked with the best sweets and candies for the grandchildren. This house is one of the few places where I can find solace from my life and enjoy time with family. Though the greatest part of this house is not the sweets, or the feeling of comfort or solace found within its walls, it is the knowing that all can be right in life. The day my grandpa passed away was an extremely sad and sorrowful day, but this house is a solemn reminder that life goes on. This house represents more than just a place to shelter you from the weather; it represents a firm foundation that you can always return to. Like family, this house will always be there for me, and because of the way it was built, it will probably literally always be there.  

Big Injuries from the Tiniest of Stature

                Back in the day, about three years ago, I was a real football star. I played every position on the field, no matter of size or skill, I did it all. I was on the Viewmont Bantam C-Team, in other words, I played for a team that won no games at all. That’s right zero. Though normally, I don’t tell people that. I tell them that I was a football star who played every position, because if I didn’t, my injury story would not be as awesome. This is my story of the time my soon-to-be football career came crashing down leaving me with a career ending injury that changed my life…and my foot.

                I was just barely in junior high and for years and years I had wanted to play football but never found myself having the courage to sign up, until now. I signed up for football not knowing what to expect, not knowing what I would get myself into. I had played competition sports before like baseball, basketball, and swimming, but never a contact sport. This was the year I decided that I was going to play football and prove to all the other kids, who had played up to five years already, that I was worth playing with.

                I got to practice the first day and it was one of the hardest things I have ever done. The coaches sort of split up the boys into veterans and new recruits, and for some reason the coaches thought that I had played in the years before. This mix up put me in a bad position where I had no idea what to do and everybody was watching me and the skills they thought I had. After that first play, it was clear to all that I was an extreme newbie, and I knew it was going to be a long year, yet I still did not know how bad it was really going to become.

                We were a couple games into the season and I had built up my knowledge of the game a bit but my skills remained the same as they were on the first day. I sucked at football. I had no defined position, I couldn’t really play any one well, and I got maximum playing time because we only had thirteen kids in which eleven are playing constantly. We were all at practice, this time it was hitting drills. I also hated to hit, or get hit, and it made no sense to me. Why would you send two kids running full speed at each other? Something bad was bound to happen. Hitting drills seemed more like a strength test and defined your status as a football player rather than a drill for learning how to play the game better.  Since this was my first year at football I had no say, so I simply shut my mouth and followed along.

                We had to lines facing away from each other about twenty yards apart. The coaches would yell, “GO!” and the two kids at the front of the lines would charge at each other trying to knock the other down. In the line we would all count the amount of kids in front of us, and then count the same number of kids in the other line to see who we were matched up with. I counted and found myself paired with the smallest kid on the football team. This would have been fine with me except for some reason that kid and I had beef with each other. No matter if he was practicing holding onto the ball while being tackled, that kid would drop his shoulder and hit me as hard as he could, with his little man syndrome (when the person is so small that he/she has to make up for it with big attitude) was shining through.

                I got to the front of the line still not knowing what to do or how I was going to handle this kid, who I knew would do everything in his power to take me down. I got ready and the coaches yelled for us to commence. I started running and I saw the kid running at me, though I had to look down quite a bit. About four feet before we made contact, I dropped my shoulder expecting the other kid to do the same. As I was soaring shoulder first towards the kid, I saw him sidestep, yet still running. I saw him stick out his left foot and felt his cleats dig into the back of my Achilles’ tendon. I continued to fall forward expecting to hit the kid but instead hit the ground. I felt the back of my leg explode with pain as the kid’s cleat kept my right heel pinned flat against the ground while the rest of my body continued forward.

                The play ended and the coaches came running over hearing my groans of pain. They hurriedly tried to figure out what was wrong as I writhed on the ground. Through gritted teeth I choked out that my right foot felt as if it had been ripped off. They pulled off my helmet and elevated my right foot on a ball bag. As I sat there with my hands pressed against my skull trying to deal with the immense amount of pain I heard them say, “Crap! We cannot afford to be losing kids!” but I thought I wasn’t much of a help anyway, they wouldn’t miss me.

                The coaches had me wait until my dad came to pick me up, and when he got there I was helped off the field by two coaches with my right foot completely off the ground. From the field my dad drove my straight to the emergency room, in which I got in almost immediately skipping the long waiting line for the second time in my life. I got into the doctor’s office and he immediately x-rayed my foot. By this time the pain became dull but came throbbing back in bursts of agony.

The doctor came back after a period of about five minutes and posted the x-rays on the back light. He turned the backlight on and I could tell something was not right with my foot. I saw the tendon attached to my heel looked extremely large because of swelling and looked like it had splintered apart. The doctor then told me that I had ruptured my Achilles tendon and that in this particular case he was not able to perform surgery on my foot. He explained how the tendon had pulled apart in the weirdest of places yet not in the right place to be considered torn. He said that if I had torn it, the tendon would be a lot easier and quicker to heal. He then went out of the office and returned with a boot that looked like something out of a science fiction movie. He also wrote out a prescription for a pain medication and explained how I would have to take the medication and wear the boot for up to eight months.

After I heard this news, I thought my life was over. School was starting in two months and I would be walking around in a boot for eight months. I knew that kid that had done this was reveling in his victory but I knew it would be short lived. Get it, short lived? I knew that I would eventually have to face the kid again and if he said any nasty comment or tried to belittle me I would just look straight, almost eight inches above his head, and act all confused like I didn’t know where his voice was coming from or ask if he represented the lollypop guild. Through all this though, I knew I was never any good at football and I knew because of this injury that my football career would halt here.

Fainting Fathers

                To start off, you have to know my dad is not good with blood or injuries. Whenever there is a bloody nose or a rather gory show, special precautions have to be taken with my dad. He just gets a bit woozy in the head but is fine after minute to regain his senses. There have only been a few extreme times when my dad has been to woozy to even stand up, though now, my dad seems to have less and less trouble with blood affecting his composure. All I know is that my dad would make a terrible doctor.

                The day started out just fine. It was my birthday and I was turning twelve years old. It was a Saturday so the entire day was spent lying around and not doing much, except for my building excitement at the coming birthday dinner and presents. I am not much of a person that likes extravagant birthdays so this birthday was spent with me being a vegetable while my mom and siblings worked at their chores for the day. This day was going to be awesome.

                The same day as my birthday my dad had gone to have his mouth worked on. My dad was having a minor surgery to correct his hereditary gingivitis and he would be back later that day. My dad got back from the doctor he said since it wasn’t that great of a surgery he could eat a little bit later but only rather soft items. Since it was my birthday, I got to choose the dinner we would go to. I decided on the Spaghetti Factory, one of my favorite places. We were going to eat, have a good time, and come back to our house for presents resulting in one of my best birthdays. Little did I know that it wouldn’t be one of my best birthdays, but one of my most memorable.

                Plans were made and the time was set to go to my wonderful birthday dinner. We got ready and left for Trolley Square and the restaurant. When we got the Spaghetti Factory, the wait was quite long even though we had a reservation. So we waited and got in after an hour or so, and were seated in a booth, situated in such a way that we could see most the restaurant and they could see us.

                The dinner proceeded just fine; we got our food while my dad got his soup and began to eat. Sitting two people to the right of my dad, I saw what I thought was him reaching for something under the table. I thought he had dropped his utensil and was reaching for it. Then I saw his elbow dip into his soup and knew something was not right. My dad just sat there while everybody at our table was trying to register what was happening. My mom reached across the table and shook my dad saying, “John, John,” over and over trying to revive my dad to the world of consciousness. By this time most people in the restaurant were looking at our table just as dumbfounded as we were, watching my mom continually shake my father.

                One of the restaurant managers came rushing towards our table to help out and as soon as he appeared, my dad woke up and looked around groggily. He looked around our table at all the faces looking down at him then looked at his elbow drowning in his dinner. He slowly sat up, not saying a word, and the manager asked if he was ok. My dad replied with a nod of his head saying, “I’m ok, thank you.” It must have been really awkward and embarrassing for him waking from his unconsented slumber to see the entire restaurant staring at him. He explained how he had been thinking, just thinking, about the cut in his mouth from his surgery and saw his vision go white.

                We left a couple minutes after to get my dad some fresh air and out of the restaurant. He did not seem woozy anymore more like confused that he had fainted from just thinking about the cut inside of his mouth. I walked beside my dad, making sure that he did not faint again injure himself from falling. My dad remained conscious and we got into the car, this time my mom driving, and headed home. I don’t remember what I was thinking except for one thought, my father was going to receive more attention than me on my own birthday.

A Great Day with a Great Friend

                As a kid, probably being eight years old, my friend and I hung out all the time, almost every day. This friend was Carlos Jimenez, who is the kid that moved and our relationship stopped, but he will always be known as my best childhood friend. He was the friend that I did everything with, every interest I had, he had also. We were pretty much the same person in two different bodies from different parents. Carlos and I were inseparable. Our relationship was golden, we never fought, we always had the same ideas, and we always knew how the other person would respond to our actions. We knew each other inside and out, not literally though. But one day, would we, or I, experience such a range in the friendship that it will never be forgotten by the both of us.

                The day was like any other. Carlos and I were hanging out doing whatever eight year old boys do, when we took our adventures outside. Carlos’ dad had just built a shed adjacent to his house for tools and other outside items. The shed was almost finished and there were only a couple things inside. Carlos’ dad only had to put on the lock to the door and it would be finished. Well this day was the day Carlos’ dad did so. We helped him put on the lock and as soon as we finished Carlos’ dad left to go run errands. We looked at the lock we had just put on and realized it was backwards! You could shut and lock the door from outside of the shed. We could not believe we had made such an amateur mistake but we didn’t know how to fix it without the help of his dad so we left it.

                Carlos and I were outside doing whatever we pleased when we came to the shed once again. By this time my other friend, Matt McGary, had come to hang out also. We showed him the shed lock that we had accidently put on backwards and he and Carlos climbed inside the shed and told me to lock the shed. We figured this was the correct way to show our friend our mistake. I locked the door, and stood back for a bit as a joke, leaving them in the locked shed. As  I was waiting, my mother came and asked me to help her with something at our house maybe two football fields away. Any though I had before my mother came simply vanished and I went to help her out.

                This thing she wanted help with took longer than I expected, about 2-2 ½ hours, and as soon as I finished, I thought about hanging out with Carlos and Matt again. Then I remembered, I had left them locked in the shed! My best friends had been locked in the shed for 2 ½ hours be me! I immediately ran back over to Carlos’ house, ran over to the shed, and unlocked it. Carlos and Matt came running out yelling, “There were bees in there!” rather hysterically.

                When they finally calmed down, I explained to them what happened. They didn’t seem mad more of like a disappointed emotion. Carlos and Matt decided, while locked in the shed, that I had forgotten since I would never play such a drawn out cruel trick. When Carlos and Matt came out and I saw they were not mad at me, I knew our relationship was stronger than most. I knew that even through some of the largest things in life, we would still be friends. I would stand corrected when they both moved within six months of each other.

Stitches and Scars

                First off, my brother and I have always been close. Even though we are seven years apart, he is still the person I relate to most out of anybody I know. We have always had the same interests and like doing the same things, most of them he had to tediously teach me. Even as close as we are, we were still siblings, and who doesn’t have occasional confrontations with their siblings. Most of our run-ins were just arguments between us that really didn’t have any effect on our relationship and we were better the next day or even in a few hours. Although this one day when one of our less extreme, more playful-like confrontations forced me to have my first ever real experience with an emergency room.

                I was about nine years old at the time and my brother was sixteen. My brother, Josh was in the kitchen most likely eating, and I walk in. Based on our past, I probably said some lame comment which caused my brother to retaliate with his own. This was just the way that we worked. Always making fun of each other in non-hurtful ways just to see how the other would react. You know, typical sibling speech where one sibling knows what makes the other tick and exploits that knowledge to their advantage. Nothing between Josh and I was ever meant to hurt one another, nothing was meant to be intentionally rude. This was how our conversations usually started, with one of us making a funny or poking comment to get the other person interested in what they had to say.

                After mild bickering for a minute or two, I must have grabbed something of Josh’s because I remember him jumping out of his seat and chasing me through the house. I saw Josh get up and I ran as fast as I could, out of the kitchen, and down the hall. I had no idea where I was going; I was just playing with my brother. I turned the corner into my sister’s room, not realizing how close Josh was behind me. I leapt onto my sister’s bottom bunk and tried to prep myself for Josh jumping on me while trying to get his object, most likely a spoon, back. I laid on the bed for a mere second then felt Josh slam into me like a car into a brick testing wall.

                I flew forward with my chin pressed into my chest trying to see my brother crash into me. Right then I felt an extremely sharp pain, more like a burning sensation, come from the back of my head. My vision went blurry and I became confused for a split second not yet realizing what happened.  I look up to see my sister’s dresser looming over me as my head lay at the corner of it. I then recognized the pain once again and realized that the back of my head had slammed into the edge of the dresser. I immediately got up, still dizzy and vision blurry, and immediately started crying because of shock.

                I ran to the bathroom soon followed by my older sister and Josh. I started to feel a warm, liquidy, feeling running down the back of my neck. Josh then flipped on the cold water and told me to dunk my head. As I sat there with cold water running over the back of my head, my brother and sister called my mom, who wasn’t home yet from errands. Being in the medical field, my mom knew quite a bit about head wounds and told my brother and sister to keep pressure on the gash and to check if my pupil were dilated. Josh and my sister then proceeded to check one eye each, which proved to be very ineffective in determining if dilation was occurring.

                Since there was nothing for us to do until my mom got home, my brother got an ice pack, wrapped it in a cloth, and sat me down to play on a Nintendo 64 for the hour that it took my mom to get home. During this time I was worried that I would bleed out while playing Automoblili Lamborghini. My mom finally got home and she was immediately bombarded by the apologies of my brother for hurting me. My mom had me keep the ice pack on my head and we got in the car, headed for the E.R.

                After about a thirty minute drive, we got there and the waiting room was extremely packed with people all waiting for a turn with the doctor. My mom went up to the desk, explained the situation, and the doctor immediately called me into his office. The doctor then asked a few questions of how it happened, how long it had been, and others I couldn’t make out. He then had me lay on a table, face down on a pillow, and told me I would be getting a shot of anesthesia and to brace myself. The pain wasn’t as unbearable as was actually hearing the shot go into the back of my head and dispense its liquid being in such close proximity to my ear.

                The doctor got out what I would imagine would be a sewing kit and started to stitch my wound close. The worst part was not the pain, but the gross symphony of sounds that I would hear in my left ear each time he dipped his needle into my skin. The stitches took about fifteen minutes total to complete. As he finished he told me to lift my head and sit up to see how the stitches held. I lifted my head to see an almost perfect circle of blood on the pillow. The doctor then told us a few things about the stitches, when to come back, and told us to call him if anything came up or we needed help. We left the hospital; I was still dizzy from the lack of blood in my head and knew that one visit would probably cost a lot of money.

                After this incident in my life, I realized how fragile humans actually are. Just one cut in the right place could have killed me given the time. Little things like this manage to take lives like mine every day and it just seems weird to me why such a little incident out of every possible thing to happen to me brought me closer to my grave than anything else. This accident didn’t really have a major impact in my life except for feeling like if I didn’t play my cards right, I would end up six feet under.

The Absence of a Friend

                My friend, Carlos Jimenez, was my best friend from age four to ten. We did absolutely everything together. He was what I considered my best friend. We would spend the day together anywhere from eight in the morning to nine at night. It did not matter what we did, we were friends through it all. In fact, we made up an entire universe for us to spend time in without any regard for other people it was just us two. I never would have thought that we would be separated, we would be friends throughout our adulthood and I wished it to happen. But then, one day, the unthinkable happened which would lead to the end of our friendship.

                I was in fourth grade at the time at the meager age of ten years old. Each day I would wait for my friend, Carlos, after school and we would walk home together. Since this was elementary school we were given a very low amount of homework with the difficulty being nearly none. Carlos and I would do our homework and hang out each and every day, sometimes to the point where my mom would tell me that I live more at his house than my own. Each day we would be together and do what ever pleased us at the time. We went through phases, one phase was the skateboarding phase, another was the Lego phase, computer games, “chemistry” phase (more like mixing random things to see what happened), and swimming phase. No matter what we did, we both shared an interest in it and had fun doing whatever it was.

                Hanging out one day, Carlos dropped the bombshell. He said he was moving. I couldn’t believe it we had been friends forever, why did it have to stop so soon? Carlos was pretty much the only person I hung out with, sure there were other kids who lived by me but they seemed too weird for my taste. Carlos said he would be moving in about a month. I had        seen the unmistakable red ‘For Sale’ signs in his garage but I always assumed the signs were there from when they bought the house. This did not seem possible, Carlos moving away. I learned that he was moving one town over, into the city of Farmington. I tried to make it seem not so bad that Carlos was moving but now I would have to drive for fifteen minutes to hang out with my best friend.

                My life changed; there wasn’t anything I could do. I could not hang out with Carlos more to compensate for when he moved because we hung out every chance we got.  I didn’t know what I was going to do or what was going to happen. I just wanted things to stay the way they were; my life was good at the time.

                The day Carlos moved was a somber day. I helped him pack the items of their home into the giant moving truck. I said my goodbyes to Carlos as he climbed into his van with his parents and brother and watched them leave my neighborhood for good. I watched them go north up the road followed by the moving truck and knew that our relationship would never be the same.

                After Carlos had settled into his new home in his new neighborhood, did we hang out once more. This house was extremely different, it was a lot bigger than the last one, giving us plenty of room to do whatever we liked. Though hanging out with Carlos became less and less frequent. Sometimes my parents could not drive me over to his house or Carlos was not able to hang out at the time. After a period of about two years we had stopped hanging out altogether. We were both starting in different junior high schools and our lived became increasingly busier. Carlos and I had no time to try and get rides to each other’s house and spend hours upon hours over there. Carlos ended up getting new friends over at his new school, friends who I did not know who lived closer to him and our relationship came to an end.

                I had not gone to school with Carlos for six years, it was only when we got into high school did we see each other again. Carlos had made friends with some people who were not the nicest of people. I knew from some of my new friends that had come from Farmington that those people were the ones who experimented with drugs and alcohol. I felt for Carlos, he did not realize that the people he was hanging out with were bringing him down with them. He did not know that the friends he had chosen were having a huge negative impact on his life and I did not want that for Carlos. Yet once again, I could do nothing I barely recognized Carlos and he recognized me even less.

                After seeing Carlos, for the first time, I was glad that I had not continued to hang out with Carlos longer than I did. I knew that if I had continued our friendship, his friends would have become mine, and then where would I be? I didn’t want that for myself or for Carlos but at least I could control what I did even if I couldn’t control what Carlos did. I watched as my best childhood friend continued to steep towards the negative and I realized I never wanted to be that person. I wanted to be someone who had friends with positive influences on me instead of those who did not even care that we were ‘friends.’ I realized that the person Carlos had become could have been me. I could be one of the people that the D.A.R.E officers talk about how I was critically affected by negative peer pressure. I wanted to be the person who I wanted to be, not the person my peers wanted me to be.