It all happened in a moment. A quick suspenseful ten seconds of my, life at six years old, on a hot thursday, driving North to the outskirts of Arcata where we lived for about a year. It was a pinkish-orange afternoon, with the sun slowly fading away over the horizon, and all I could smell was the ugly grayish-black fumes of the different colored cars ahead of us. I was with my mom and my brother. My mom had the face where you were sure that she was happy to be where she was at, and not a thing was stressing her out. She had to have been around the age of thirty two at that point. My brother was in his own little world of sound effects which was very normal for him. He was having a good time just like everyone else in the car. And my brother, being eleven and a half months older than me, had to have been roughly six, almost seven. For me, I was minding my own, and simply watching the green grass rolling hills, and the billowing fluffy clouds that seemed endless with the darkening colorful sky that always seemed to be looking down on me and everyone and everything else.
My brother and I were of the age where we had very little responsibilities. We had no chores, didn't have to wash our dishes, and we liked to mess around and play with our hot wheels cars and fling them off ramps and such. I liked to play with my Pokemon cards, and Simon liked to play with our thousands of lego pieces that we liked to collect. One other thing we liked to play with that was a crucial influence to the situation that we soon to be in, were our army action figures. We had guys with assault rifles, grenade launchers, pistols, and finally bazookas. These tiny, little plastic figures made us see sticks as guns, or as grenades. Every time we saw a stick or something to throw at each other that would not leave any lasting damage on ourselves, we would pick it up and pretend to shoot each other, or hurl it in another's direction making the gruesome sound effects of someone being blown up.
My mom was driving at a normal yielding speed as she saw the bright yellow sign to inform drivers to make the decision to slow down or gradually speed up, depending on weather or not there is a car on the highway next to you. There were no cars on the highway, other than the sun-faded purple Honda minivan ahead of us, who was already making that decision. We were soon to do the same. She always kept this bamboo stick in our old car because there was problem with our trunk: it would not stay open. If it was not propped up by something or held up, it would slowly fall down as the pressure was released. My brother and I were sitting in the back row of leather seats, paying attention to the cars that went by; I was on the right side and he was on the left. Simon slowly reached back and grabbed the bamboo stick from the trunk. You can probably guess why he was grabbing it. He rested it on his shoulder and pretended to shoot the cars in front of us. I thought that this was so cool so I complained and whined to him until he handed it over.
“Mom. Tell Simon to give me the stick! Hes already had a long enough turn!”
And so he did, after my mom telling him to.
Me and my brother fought a lot back then and have all our lives. We even still fight each other to this day. We should be more mature about that kind of stuff being the age that we are, but its hard when one of us is taunting each other, or making each other angry just for the fun of it. I don't do this to anyone else but him. We just have always had a big case of sibling rivalry. One thing that we have changed though is that we have more of a sense of respect for each other. So we don't get into as many fights as we used to. Respect. That is the whole cause of our fighting. I think if we had the full respect for who we both are and what we both accomplish than we would be a much happier set of brothers.
As the stick was handed over to me I gripped it with a sense of awesomeness. I thought I was the coolest thing in the world. In the United States, the steering wheel is on the left side of the car, and you always are driving on the right side of the road. I was sitting on the left side, vertical to my mom and also the steering wheel. I thought to myself, what could possibly go wrong; this is awesome shooting these cars with this bazooka. And just like that, as I was not paying attention to the end of the stick, it slid into the left pocket of the steering wheel, disabling my moms steering to a certain extent; which was not enough to get us safely around the corner of that turn at the speed we were going. We were about five feet from the silvery guard rail that precisely surrounded the turn, and even if my mom braked at that very moment, we would have crashed forcefully into the railing. So there was only one possible thing to do; pull the stick out as soon as possible and jerk the steering wheel hard to the left to avoid getting into a major accident. We’re going to get hurt if we don't work together and do something fast, I thought. So just like that, I snapped out of my little kid bazooka army world, took a deep breath, and as were were about to hit the monstrous side railing, with a strong jerk of my arm, I quickly pulled out the stick, my mind hurting with everyone screaming. My mom then swung the wheel as hard as she could and miraculously we were able to make it safely back onto the road. Nobody got hurt, but it was definitely one of the most scary and dramatic moments of my life so far.
You explained it well and I definitely could see it as i read it. good vocabulary too :)
ReplyDeletenice opening paragraph and suspense
ReplyDeleteI like the way you made the story flow and i love the hook to the story.
ReplyDeleteI thought your details were great and how you kept referring to the army world
ReplyDeletegood suspense
ReplyDeleteI like the moral you presented with your story. The karma of fighting with someone over a petty object.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you caught that Garrett
DeleteGreat title! I liked your thought: "We’re going to get hurt if we don't work together and do something fast."
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