Junior Year Personal Narrative
11:23 PM[I wrote this essay as my final assignment of Honors American Literature, which was a personal narrative. Mr. Carpenter wanted us to learn that absolute occurrence is irrelevant as displayed in The Things They Carried. This was the essay I turned in and read to the class. I was unsure of what to write about (as I'm sure we all were), especially because we were all expected to read it out to the class. In the end, I started with a snippet of an idea and words just flowed from there.]
Elaine Wang
Carpenter
Honors American Literature 6
27 May 2016
Hallways
When I was in fourth grade, walking past the playground towards the lunch tables with my two friends at the time, I heard somebody laughing from the playground.
It was a type of laugh that I would commit to my memory.
Maggie ran over to him and asked him what he said.
She told me what he said, and I said I didn’t care.
“How can you not care. Why do we always care about you so much more than you care about yourself.”
Of course I care. But what was I supposed to do. I imagined myself calling him out. I imagined myself kicking him in the face.
I could have done a lot of things, but it’s not as if it would have made what he said any less true.
In fifth grade, Valerie moved to LA.
In seventh grade, Maggie and I stopped contacting each other, and I don't really know why. It’s hard to imagine that we’d go from voice chatting on Skype in boisterous laughter or comfortable silence every single day for years to never speaking again. It's weird because I want to speak to her again, but I no longer know what I would say.
I wonder if she ever still thinks about the times we had together or if I'm just the one who cares too much.
I sat next to him in seventh grade Biology, and I never felt more that the tables were not separate enough.
After so many years, I wondered if it was irrational that I still hated him. After a year of wondering, I gave up on hating him because it’s tiring.
In eighth grade his girlfriend came to my friend’s birthday party. I’d known her since elementary school as well. She’s nice; I didn’t really mind her. She video chatted him and, when he saw me, he told her what he had said about me all those years ago, and then he laughed that laugh.
I felt a spike of something inside me. I stared off at the grass that was already dead and the color of dried blood and the spiders and the ants and the random crumbs of Lays lying around and I wondered if they would care if we destroyed them because we could.
I laughed too. “It doesn’t really matter.”
I hate him. I felt it subside.
Even now when I walk by him at school, the only thing I remember about him is who he was in fourth grade. And then who he was in eighth grade. And then his red jacket. And all the different versions of him that I meet throughout the years.
But I didn’t actually know them.
In ninth grade, my Biology teacher called me in during lunch and asked me if I hated him. I said no.
“I feel like you’re kind of mean to me.”
I hadn’t even talked to him before.
One day as I’m walking down the hallway, I see a classmate, and I feel the urge to say hi. But I wonder if they even know my name.
In tenth grade, I decided to talk to my Literature teacher, and it turned out to be fun.
One day as I’m walking down a hallway, a classmate says hi to me. I’m shocked, and I wonder if they’re talking to someone else. Even though there’s no one else there.
In eleventh grade, during a historical discussion about the 3000 page long primary source that I didn’t read, I suddenly find myself saying,
“I like your nails.”
“Thanks.”
We don’t ever talk again, but I’m fine with that.
As I’m walking down a hallway, a student says hi to me. I’m shocked because I don’t know their name, and I wonder how they know mine. I say hi anyway.
One day, I’d like to walk down a hallway and say hi, with both of us knowing each other’s name.
I’d like to walk down a street and say hi to someone I don’t really know.
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