My English Paper...YAY!!!
English9 Ruby Strait
2nd Personal Nonfiction 2/18/2004
On the day of thanks all of my family meets upstate in Albany. We sit at a table all dressed in our finest autumn clothes and eat the food made by the elders. Every year is the same, perfect…just like it is publicized to be. This year would be different; I could feel it.
As school ended I ran to my locker surpassing all of the upper school students and parents as I tried to get to my locker. The lock was different from any others used on the cold slaps of metal. It was pink with four different axels with numbers on them that ran up too the number 9. My combination at that time was 9327, which spelled out my name when decoded from numeral form. The lock quickly undid itself in my hands and as fast as a racehorse I removed my mini suitcase out of my locker and ran to the now apparent exit.
That day in 2002 was brisk and windy with a light sent of dried leaves on the air. The old Volvo that my family drives was waiting right around the corner on Clinton St. My brother Conor was in the front seat and he knew that it was my turn to sit up front. I hated when he did things deliberately to cause some action in his dreary life; especially when they involved annoying me. The fact that half of the interaction I had with my brother was when he did these things was almost pathetic.
After arguing with the younger version of my father I finally got my seat and we were off. The trees on the side of the road were turning all the earth tones that I could come up with in my mind, but the buildings of New York still tower over them in the distance. Staring out of the window I can notice all of the fallen leaves and the lone red tailed hawks flying higher than imaginable in the sky.
Wings outstretched reaching for the ends of the Earth to meet. Sharp talons gripping the wind as its new found perch and hooked mouth pointing ever forwards. The day that was once bright had turned to dusk and then night. The stars shone brighter than they ever did in the city; being as there were no buildings or artificial lights out on the highways.
The time from then on passed within a brief amount of time and the sight of the evil Red Light was yet again red. It was red every time we came to my grandparent’s house and only once in my 14 years of life it was green. That was a wonderful day and it was almost like we had had a victory in the car. My brother and mother were jumping up and down, which made the car shake and I started to sing out We are the Champions by Queen.
Rosemont was the street that we drove down to get to the black paved driveway. The lights shined through the two open windows on the first floor of the old brownstone and the little bathroom light was on as well. You could look at this house in amazement because of the amount of windows it had. The one thing that my grandparent’s house had that was oh so different from the rest on the road was the chimney that rose five feet off the slanted roof.
It was now completely dark, and Friday night as we got slowly, but steadily out of the Volkswagen. My grandfather ran, no not ran, but walked very quickly out to greet us. He put more of his weight on his left leg and so when he walked he half limped. In his youth he had had brown hair, but now in his 75th year of life his head was covered by a blanket of snow. Eyes bright blue like the sky reflecting off of the dew on the long blades of grass his twinkled so bright; even in this darkness they looked so bright. His voice was rusty, but clear and if was the best thing in the world to hear my grandfather say, “Welcome home.”
We would all hug and kiss each other on both cheeks in the old Italian fashion that was upheld in my family. When hugging my grandpa I could see my grandmother at the door. She was older than my grandfather, and in her time she had grown weak and now had numerous problems with her legs; this is why she stood in the door way rather than come out to greet us. She was a nice old lady, but cynical and almost regularly put a downer on things. She was stout with a head full of dark grey hair. A fully Italian woman, she had a strong accent. I could hardly understand a word she said…that is except when it had to do with being spanked with a paddle for doing any wrong in her household. Then again she was always there to lean on.
That night we ate pasta vazule which is an Italia soup that consists of beans, celery, noodles and chicken broth. It was a slow dinner and all five of us sat together at the small fold out table in the kitchen rather than the large table in the dinning room used for family gatherings. We listened to the old radio scratching and trying to spit out the scores of the basketball game and as soon as it had begun we were already done with desert.
The one thing I could always look forward to at 141 Rosemont was a warm bed to sleep in. The bed was as high as my waist with no frame or border, it just sat on a box spring waiting for someone to come and lye within its warmth. The blankets were all flannel and had stayed flannel for all of my life.
I walked up the stairs into the small hallway perpendicular to the front of the house and soon found myself turning left yet into another smaller corridor which had at the end the bedroom my brother and I stayed in. The small hallway was hard to get through because of our bags, which my mom had over-packed. The corridor soon ended and I found myself looking into a reflecting pool mounted on a wall. The beds kept to different ends of the room and the walls stayed a pure white. The 2 windows, which had always been in that room still stood; one being over the right side of my bed and the other in the middle of the far wall.
I put my bag down and jumped into my dreams without a word or changing into my pajamas and just as I had, my brother followed suit; he always did.
The next morning it was not the sun that woke me, but the smell of bacon being fried on the stove downstairs. My grandmother loved to cook, especially bacon because everybody in my family liked it. I drifted downstairs, my feet following each other as if possessed by the smell of the cooked meat. All the plates were neatly arranged around the kitchen table and I looked deeply into my empty plate.
“What would you like bunny?” my grandmother asked. She had all these different nicknames, but I responded to each and every one of them.
“Some bacon would be fine.”
“How many strips do you want?” My grandmother always liked to know the details of everything, but I still responded.
“I’ll have five or…..” but before I knew it she had already made it across the small seven foot room and put not five, but six strips of bacon on my plate. She knew me all to well, or at least when it came to food.
By the time I was done with my breakfast my brother was walking down the stairs all sleepy eyed. He walked in such a manner that one would think he was drunk, but then again, my entire family is like that in the morning.
“What day is it?” asked Conor.
“It’s Thanksgiving today,” replied my grandmother in a quick fashion.
“Where are we going for dinner?” I asked.
“Uncle Paul’s,” said my Grandfather from the other room. He was reading the newspaper as he always did in the morning. He had these huge glasses that were about half an inch think and with wide clear plastic rims.
“But we went to his house last year,” Conor said in a complaining voice. He always had to complain about everything.
“We are going and that’s the end of it,” said Grandma Teresa. Not only was she old and able to make every situation a painfully horrible one, but what she said was law.
That evening we all got dressed up in our Thanksgiving clothes and went outside into the cold night and the Lincoln Town Car, which belonged to my grandfather. As we all piled into the car my grandfather took his regular spot in the driver’s seat, my grandmother in the front passenger seat and Conor, my mom and myself in the back. My mother sat between my brother and me so that we would not fight.
The car ride was a quick one hour up to Bethlehem New York and as quickly as we ad gotten in, we jumped out of the small compartment and headed up the lawn to the garage. I could hear Mandy barking her little head off. She was a Siberian husky, but not because of the fact that she was brown. To be honest I actually never knew what kind of dog she was or is to this day.
My cousin Katie opened the door and I gave her a smile as I did with the rest of my family, but my cousin Lauren was the only one who I would actually hug or kiss. My cousin Lauren and me had a very special bond because of the fact that we are so alike, have shared so many stories and share the same birthday; June 24th, but she is two years older than me. Half of my family is gay, lesbian or bisexual. My cousins Katie and Eric are both gay and my cousin Courtney is bisexual, while Lauren was a lesbian in an earlier stage of her life and now was going out with this guy named Ryan. My other cousin Steven was and still is straight as is my brother.
The night started out just as any other Thanksgiving, but then we sat down to eat. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but for some reason the houses thermostat was broken and so the temperature was soaring into the high eighties. Because of this my cousins Steven and my brother Conor took off their over shits and under them they had on “wife beaters” which are in fact undershirts, but we call the wife beaters. My cousins Lauren, Courtney and Katie then went upstairs to get a wife beater for each of them and they brought one down for me. I looked at it for a moment and the walked about 20 feet to the bathroom to change. I took off my sweatshirt and regular shirt which was pitch black. I put my head and arms through the holes given for them in the wife beater and then looked in the mirror. The undershirt made me look fat and I was embarrassed to go out into the dinning room with it on, but I remembered that all my cousins were as well as me in these undershirts…and so I slowly turned the knob and went swiftly to my place at the end of the table. I could see my grandmother’s face and it didn’t look so good from where I was sitting, and just then she yelled “You children have no respect!” We were all shocked, but ignored her even tough she was an elder.
My Cousin Katie has this thing with the word ‘moist’. She just doesn’t like it and cringes every time that someone says it. We all make fun of her and say the “m” word all the time when she is around, but only because we know that she doesn’t like it.
“Hay Katie!” yelled Conor.
“What do you want, I’m trying to eat,” she replied.
“Moist,” said Conor in a joking voice, but it was obviously no joke to Katie, because she started to half choke on her turkey. She got it down though with a huge gulp of wine.
My family has this thing with drinking, they love it and every once in a while they would give me a little bit of wine or Bailey’s Irish Cream. However this year was different. My uncle Paul who was and still is married to my aunt Joan gave me an entire mug of Bailey’s Irish Cream. Being the stupid child I was, I drank it like water and then fell asleep on a chair.
When I had awoke the next morning I had found that once I was asleep I had missed out on the best part of our ‘White Trash Thanksgiving’, which was posing for pictures. I really wished I had been awake to enjoy the fun, but it would have been impossible for me to stand up even if I was awake…so I was thankful for sleep.
That Thanksgiving was in the year of 1999 and I miss it every day of my life. I miss my family whenever I do not see them, but I know to look forward to every single holiday to see another dumb thing that they will do. I have a silly family and a ridiculous history with them, but that is what makes us a family forever.
2nd Personal Nonfiction 2/18/2004
On the day of thanks all of my family meets upstate in Albany. We sit at a table all dressed in our finest autumn clothes and eat the food made by the elders. Every year is the same, perfect…just like it is publicized to be. This year would be different; I could feel it.
As school ended I ran to my locker surpassing all of the upper school students and parents as I tried to get to my locker. The lock was different from any others used on the cold slaps of metal. It was pink with four different axels with numbers on them that ran up too the number 9. My combination at that time was 9327, which spelled out my name when decoded from numeral form. The lock quickly undid itself in my hands and as fast as a racehorse I removed my mini suitcase out of my locker and ran to the now apparent exit.
That day in 2002 was brisk and windy with a light sent of dried leaves on the air. The old Volvo that my family drives was waiting right around the corner on Clinton St. My brother Conor was in the front seat and he knew that it was my turn to sit up front. I hated when he did things deliberately to cause some action in his dreary life; especially when they involved annoying me. The fact that half of the interaction I had with my brother was when he did these things was almost pathetic.
After arguing with the younger version of my father I finally got my seat and we were off. The trees on the side of the road were turning all the earth tones that I could come up with in my mind, but the buildings of New York still tower over them in the distance. Staring out of the window I can notice all of the fallen leaves and the lone red tailed hawks flying higher than imaginable in the sky.
Wings outstretched reaching for the ends of the Earth to meet. Sharp talons gripping the wind as its new found perch and hooked mouth pointing ever forwards. The day that was once bright had turned to dusk and then night. The stars shone brighter than they ever did in the city; being as there were no buildings or artificial lights out on the highways.
The time from then on passed within a brief amount of time and the sight of the evil Red Light was yet again red. It was red every time we came to my grandparent’s house and only once in my 14 years of life it was green. That was a wonderful day and it was almost like we had had a victory in the car. My brother and mother were jumping up and down, which made the car shake and I started to sing out We are the Champions by Queen.
Rosemont was the street that we drove down to get to the black paved driveway. The lights shined through the two open windows on the first floor of the old brownstone and the little bathroom light was on as well. You could look at this house in amazement because of the amount of windows it had. The one thing that my grandparent’s house had that was oh so different from the rest on the road was the chimney that rose five feet off the slanted roof.
It was now completely dark, and Friday night as we got slowly, but steadily out of the Volkswagen. My grandfather ran, no not ran, but walked very quickly out to greet us. He put more of his weight on his left leg and so when he walked he half limped. In his youth he had had brown hair, but now in his 75th year of life his head was covered by a blanket of snow. Eyes bright blue like the sky reflecting off of the dew on the long blades of grass his twinkled so bright; even in this darkness they looked so bright. His voice was rusty, but clear and if was the best thing in the world to hear my grandfather say, “Welcome home.”
We would all hug and kiss each other on both cheeks in the old Italian fashion that was upheld in my family. When hugging my grandpa I could see my grandmother at the door. She was older than my grandfather, and in her time she had grown weak and now had numerous problems with her legs; this is why she stood in the door way rather than come out to greet us. She was a nice old lady, but cynical and almost regularly put a downer on things. She was stout with a head full of dark grey hair. A fully Italian woman, she had a strong accent. I could hardly understand a word she said…that is except when it had to do with being spanked with a paddle for doing any wrong in her household. Then again she was always there to lean on.
That night we ate pasta vazule which is an Italia soup that consists of beans, celery, noodles and chicken broth. It was a slow dinner and all five of us sat together at the small fold out table in the kitchen rather than the large table in the dinning room used for family gatherings. We listened to the old radio scratching and trying to spit out the scores of the basketball game and as soon as it had begun we were already done with desert.
The one thing I could always look forward to at 141 Rosemont was a warm bed to sleep in. The bed was as high as my waist with no frame or border, it just sat on a box spring waiting for someone to come and lye within its warmth. The blankets were all flannel and had stayed flannel for all of my life.
I walked up the stairs into the small hallway perpendicular to the front of the house and soon found myself turning left yet into another smaller corridor which had at the end the bedroom my brother and I stayed in. The small hallway was hard to get through because of our bags, which my mom had over-packed. The corridor soon ended and I found myself looking into a reflecting pool mounted on a wall. The beds kept to different ends of the room and the walls stayed a pure white. The 2 windows, which had always been in that room still stood; one being over the right side of my bed and the other in the middle of the far wall.
I put my bag down and jumped into my dreams without a word or changing into my pajamas and just as I had, my brother followed suit; he always did.
The next morning it was not the sun that woke me, but the smell of bacon being fried on the stove downstairs. My grandmother loved to cook, especially bacon because everybody in my family liked it. I drifted downstairs, my feet following each other as if possessed by the smell of the cooked meat. All the plates were neatly arranged around the kitchen table and I looked deeply into my empty plate.
“What would you like bunny?” my grandmother asked. She had all these different nicknames, but I responded to each and every one of them.
“Some bacon would be fine.”
“How many strips do you want?” My grandmother always liked to know the details of everything, but I still responded.
“I’ll have five or…..” but before I knew it she had already made it across the small seven foot room and put not five, but six strips of bacon on my plate. She knew me all to well, or at least when it came to food.
By the time I was done with my breakfast my brother was walking down the stairs all sleepy eyed. He walked in such a manner that one would think he was drunk, but then again, my entire family is like that in the morning.
“What day is it?” asked Conor.
“It’s Thanksgiving today,” replied my grandmother in a quick fashion.
“Where are we going for dinner?” I asked.
“Uncle Paul’s,” said my Grandfather from the other room. He was reading the newspaper as he always did in the morning. He had these huge glasses that were about half an inch think and with wide clear plastic rims.
“But we went to his house last year,” Conor said in a complaining voice. He always had to complain about everything.
“We are going and that’s the end of it,” said Grandma Teresa. Not only was she old and able to make every situation a painfully horrible one, but what she said was law.
That evening we all got dressed up in our Thanksgiving clothes and went outside into the cold night and the Lincoln Town Car, which belonged to my grandfather. As we all piled into the car my grandfather took his regular spot in the driver’s seat, my grandmother in the front passenger seat and Conor, my mom and myself in the back. My mother sat between my brother and me so that we would not fight.
The car ride was a quick one hour up to Bethlehem New York and as quickly as we ad gotten in, we jumped out of the small compartment and headed up the lawn to the garage. I could hear Mandy barking her little head off. She was a Siberian husky, but not because of the fact that she was brown. To be honest I actually never knew what kind of dog she was or is to this day.
My cousin Katie opened the door and I gave her a smile as I did with the rest of my family, but my cousin Lauren was the only one who I would actually hug or kiss. My cousin Lauren and me had a very special bond because of the fact that we are so alike, have shared so many stories and share the same birthday; June 24th, but she is two years older than me. Half of my family is gay, lesbian or bisexual. My cousins Katie and Eric are both gay and my cousin Courtney is bisexual, while Lauren was a lesbian in an earlier stage of her life and now was going out with this guy named Ryan. My other cousin Steven was and still is straight as is my brother.
The night started out just as any other Thanksgiving, but then we sat down to eat. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but for some reason the houses thermostat was broken and so the temperature was soaring into the high eighties. Because of this my cousins Steven and my brother Conor took off their over shits and under them they had on “wife beaters” which are in fact undershirts, but we call the wife beaters. My cousins Lauren, Courtney and Katie then went upstairs to get a wife beater for each of them and they brought one down for me. I looked at it for a moment and the walked about 20 feet to the bathroom to change. I took off my sweatshirt and regular shirt which was pitch black. I put my head and arms through the holes given for them in the wife beater and then looked in the mirror. The undershirt made me look fat and I was embarrassed to go out into the dinning room with it on, but I remembered that all my cousins were as well as me in these undershirts…and so I slowly turned the knob and went swiftly to my place at the end of the table. I could see my grandmother’s face and it didn’t look so good from where I was sitting, and just then she yelled “You children have no respect!” We were all shocked, but ignored her even tough she was an elder.
My Cousin Katie has this thing with the word ‘moist’. She just doesn’t like it and cringes every time that someone says it. We all make fun of her and say the “m” word all the time when she is around, but only because we know that she doesn’t like it.
“Hay Katie!” yelled Conor.
“What do you want, I’m trying to eat,” she replied.
“Moist,” said Conor in a joking voice, but it was obviously no joke to Katie, because she started to half choke on her turkey. She got it down though with a huge gulp of wine.
My family has this thing with drinking, they love it and every once in a while they would give me a little bit of wine or Bailey’s Irish Cream. However this year was different. My uncle Paul who was and still is married to my aunt Joan gave me an entire mug of Bailey’s Irish Cream. Being the stupid child I was, I drank it like water and then fell asleep on a chair.
When I had awoke the next morning I had found that once I was asleep I had missed out on the best part of our ‘White Trash Thanksgiving’, which was posing for pictures. I really wished I had been awake to enjoy the fun, but it would have been impossible for me to stand up even if I was awake…so I was thankful for sleep.
That Thanksgiving was in the year of 1999 and I miss it every day of my life. I miss my family whenever I do not see them, but I know to look forward to every single holiday to see another dumb thing that they will do. I have a silly family and a ridiculous history with them, but that is what makes us a family forever.