English 9/10, Ms. Keener
June 22, y
English 9/10 Course 2 Anthology: Injury Stories and Other Tales
Julia Birnbach Kathleen Conner Chris Doyle Alexandra Dulman Jackson Gautreau Violet Gautreau Ross Ginsberg Sydni Lawrence Nathalie Milstein Josh Moskow Margot Reddy Claire Silverman Luke Smith Ryan Van Fleet Emma Warshofsky Liam Whitehouse Danny Yoon
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June 22, y
Julia Birnbach The first days of winter are perfect. When you can first see your breath in front of you. When you first wake up and feel cold and delighted and have to sprint into a warm shower or robe. When you first pull on a winter jacket. When you feel the first snow. There’s a sense of beginning and potential and familiarity. Winter seems to have its own pervasive zeitgeist that is first wrapped in a bundle of holidays. Starting promptly on November first, it’s all turkey, everything. The atmosphere is cornbread and family. The beginnings of fall have settled and the new beginnings of holidays begin. The cycle of holidays so intoxicating and mystical. The second Thanksgiving is over, you see Christmas and Chanukah everywhere. All of a sudden, the Salvation Army bells are clanging on every street corner, and red and green find a way to seep into everything. Life moves to the beat of carols and gingerbread. And then, before you know it, it is time for New Year’s, and there is a brief period of resolutions and taking down trees. And then it’s the reds and pinks and whites of Valentine’s Day with its candy hearts, and all of a sudden, there is emptiness. No more holidays, just the bitter winter. People go from rosy cheeks and cheer to being disheveled and tired. We hope and pray for the middleness of winter to find its dusk so we can get to the dawn of spring. Middles are no fun; they make you feel trapped within jaded confines. The middleness seems endless. From February 15 until the snow melts, the cold wind and the chapped lips are relentless. The snow isn’t magical and fresh anymore, but permanently stained black from dirt. And it’s icy instead of a soft carpet perfect for play. Coats don’t feel like a cute accessory but an annoying heavy weight on the shoulder. Skin is dry instead of happily red. Feet are frozen into boots. Ice skating, skiing, and hot chocolate-drinking are no longer fun and jolly. Going through the tunnel of winter is tough, but then the light at the end of it appears, and spring comes. Finally the jackets come off, and the snow melts. Although we eagerly wore pants in 60 degree weather when we sought winter, we earnestly wear shorts in 60 degree weather, seeking summer. But while the routine of winter is cyclic, winter is very personal to me. To me, when I think of winter, I think of sledding at night with my sister and dad. I think of Chanukah, and my family singing prayers around the Mickey Mouse menorah we’ve had forever. I think of walking my dog through that first snow and seeing her footprints engraved that seem to stay forever, until they’re covered by another layer of snow. There is something so pure and satisfying about walking through snow; it’s a final frontier. While all land on Earth has been walked upon, a fresh sheet of snow has no footprints and has never been touched by human feet, which is why, I think, there is a solitary feeling of being a kid when 2
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June 22, y
we walk through snow—walking on snow is synonymous to making your mark and starting something new. I digress. When I think of winter I think of Christmas carols, even though I’m Jewish. I think of Lynn McKay’s frequent calls to announce snow days. I think of using the Snow Day Calculator online. I think of shrugged shoulders trying to isolate against the cold. I think of chapped lips and crackly hands. The traditions and holidays of winter are unchanging and inevitable, which brings familiarity and warmth. So, perhaps the magic in winter is in the lack of change.
Kathleen Conner Marriage isn’t for everyone. Now, before you take up stones and chase me through the village, let me make one thing clear: I am not against the idea of marriage. Yes, I’m sure half of you have already written me off as some clueless naïve girl with big ideas and arguments that are controversial—more for the shock value rather than the actual truth. Probably you think I am someone who is about to throw some big metaphor on you without any explanation as to what it means and pretend its “deep.” However, to the other half, I will say this. I think there is a lot to be said for someone who commits themselves to another person for eternity, someone who is able to walk down the aisle while everyone watches them make one heck of a promise. Some days I could even imagine a life where I would get married, though I don’t tend to dwell on the future too long. So what am I protesting here? What I am protesting is 5 inch binders decorated with ribbon, filled with every detail of a wedding from the cake to the guest list, owned by eight year olds with imaginary grooms. I’m protesting marriage as an item on a to-do list to be checked off, a way to measure someone’s success at life, the earlier in life the better. I’m protesting everyone who expects marriage, and asks what is wrong when someone isn’t married. When did marriage become so expected? With little girls planning weddings, acting as if marriage is inevitable, one must ask if marriage then is even about the love two people have for one another, or is it just the dream party a little girl once planned? Maybe I’m just a romantic, but to me the idea that marriage is a mandatory requirement of life takes the magic out of the randomness of falling in love. I’d like to believe that there is just a person out there who you will randomly bump into, and that will be it, but it's hard to believe when media makes it out to be more of a “rite of passage” for every 20- to 30-year-old. It also says that marriage is normal, that it is almost the only and the correct way to express commitment and love. It isn’t. With divorce rates climbing, many have asked, what is wrong with our marriages? However, maybe it isn’t that people are bad at being married today, or at least any worse than they ever were. Maybe too many people expect love at a certain time in a certain form, and settle for something that isn’t because it came in the correct package. Society expects marriage between two young adults, one male and one female. Something out of the norm isn’t expected, and in some cases isn’t even legal. Why? 3
English 9/10, Ms. Keener
June 22, y
Because it isn’t “normal.” Unless you believe that cosmic fate, and the kind of fate that always works out just in the nick of time, what are the chances that two people perfect for one another find each other at the right time and in the right situation? What are the chances two perfect people find each other at all? There are 7 billion people in the world, trillions of gene and gene combinations, and hundreds of ideas about what makes two people perfect for one another. Then think about all the people you never even meet, or all the people who never even lived at the same time as you, and yet you expect to find the one by the time you are 30? What does “the one” even mean? Also, isn’t it possible there is more than just one person out there who would be perfect, or maybe none at all? With these odds, it's amazing that anyone finds someone they love so much they could live with each other forever, so instead of asking people why they aren’t married, as if they have failed some test, we should just celebrate those who have found love, whether or not they are married.
Chris Doyle When winter reaches the United States, towns become a mixture of happiness and sorrow. Children think of the fun holidays such as Christmas and Hanukkah, while adults and teachers groan, because most of them despise the snow. They think of all the messed up driveways, icy roads, slush, and most of all, snow days. While some hate these impromptu days off, it is one of my favorite things in the year. I love snow days because of how satisfying they are during the school year, and they’re also why I love winter so much. Unlike planned 3-day weekends or random development days, I find it much more enjoyable when I can wake up to a snow day. I cannot describe the feelings, but I always feel so good inside waking up at my usual time, and getting up only to hear the same phone call of Lyn McKay's voice informing the school district to stay safe and warm, mentioning that school is canceled. I would first look outside, and examining the white blanket around my house, run back upstairs and fall asleep again, content that I didn't have to do that homework assignment I left unfinished or a test scheduled on the day. A snow day is a huge burden off my back. For a day I am released of 6 long hours at school. This can usually give me more time to study, or that one lucky extra day to polish up a project. Snow days are always times to relax for me. While others freak out about being trapped around snow and ice, I find it calming that I almost have to stay inside for the whole day. Often I make good food for myself, pretty much grabbing anything that can be made quickly and simply, and spend the snow day either lying down or doing chores and tasks that I normally don't have time to accomplish. The main target of these chores is my room, which I never have time to organize. Snow days 4
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June 22, y
also let you spend time with family. Sometimes being stuck all in one place for a day or two can be beneficial for relations with parents as well as siblings. Sometimes during snow days, my parents would organize fun things to do like a board game or watching a movie. These special times have formed some of my most vivid and lively memories that I will always remember.
One final reason I like snow days is the guarantee that friends and people you know will be off as well, usually without plans. This makes for the opportunity to plan winter related things to do during the day, if weather permits. I would just call up some friends, and we would do things from sledding to snowball fights. Whatever the reason, snow days are some of my favorite times of the year, much more important to me than any old day off, weekend, or even some holidays. The things my friends, my family, and I do make the days so special. And they mark the full swing of winter, one of my favorite times of the year. I guess you can say that snow days are my favorite holiday.
Alexandra Dulman I never feel like I am getting it right when it comes to English creative work. I know that certain assignments are designed to encourage creativity, so they do not come with step by step directions for what you need to do for an assignment. These strict guidelines however, are what I like the best. It brings comfort to me being able to check off step by step what needs to completed, and it makes me much more confident knowing that I handed in work that is done to the best of my ability. On the other hand, I constantly worry and am never confident in handing in pieces that have vague or few directions. Firstly, I struggle with finding an initial idea. It always feels like I am missing what the teacher intended for me to do, or that my idea is just not good and I could do better. Even after eventually choosing something, this inevitable feeling of failure takes over my mind and “this just isn’t right” plays in my head on repeat. Don’t get me wrong—I am not saying that creativity or room for interpretation is a bad thing. I honestly wish with all of me that I could be more confident in my original ideas or more creative. I guess I am just very different than my peers who seem excited when the mention of independence or room for creativity comes up. While these words may seem like an exciting opportunity to others, to me they sound like a nightmare. I just don’t know how they do it! Some of my classmates will come into class with what seems like a professionally written piece of literature that is “just a draft”. Somehow, their mind is able to explore a 5
English 9/10, Ms. Keener
June 22, y
unique way of looking at an assignment while also executing it flawlessly. Sometimes, they will even talk about “writer’s trance” or some type of flow created when you are really into writing a piece and words can just flow freely from your mind, through your hands to the paper. This, to me, seems like a feeling in the category of unicorns or the Tooth Fairy—a myth. A wonderful idea that would overall make the world a better place if it existed, but is non-existent. Maybe someday, through divine intervention or possibly luck, I will be able to feel confident in my work and have my writing flow. For some reason, though, whether it is the uniform English style of grading that I have grown up with in Chappaqua schools, or my own issues with confidence, I will only ever feel like I, as a writer, am good enough if it is validated by a rubric, and I can only seem to write good pieces after they are thoroughly outlined. What scares me even more is life outside of school. Sure, I hate it now when I get an assignment with no specific instructions, but there isn’t a neat little handbook for growing up. There are no clear cut instructions for figuring out what you want to do in life and what makes you happy. Many times you have to write your own rubric, self-evaluate or assess how you are doing, and many times, believe in yourself even if it is not validated by other people. In many jobs, if you want to have a more senior position, you have to write the directions for other people to follow. I guess when I look at the big picture, it’s better if I learn to survive without the direction the hard way now, before I am unprepared when it really matters.
Jackson Gautreau The worst pain I’ve ever felt was when I tore my meniscus after dancing to High School Musical. This was a public place, too—just goes to show how little shame I have. I sat on the floor, and then when I tried to stand back up, I just fell right back down. Then I was alarmed by the sound of something cracking, the extreme pain I was in, and also my inability to straighten my knee. With my left leg locked in a bent position, I was carried by some kind strangers into this little office where I was draped over a plush, red couch like a wounded movie star. The secretary working in there didn’t even bother to look up from her Dell to witness my pain or my beauty. I was left there for about forty-five minutes while I howled into my phone at my mom, who wasn’t yet convinced that I was truly injured. After a solid half-hour of phone-screaming, she decided that maybe I was worth it, and stopped whatever she was so casually doing to take me to the emergency room. As I hung up, some woman had the audacity to approach my plush, red couch and tried to balance a smiley-face ice pack the size of a Ritz cracker on top of my swollen kneecap as though somehow that would allow me to stand up and do a cartwheel. What was she thinking? She then proceeded to scold me for wearing such tight jeans before 6
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June 22, y
getting injured. She tried to roll them up but they just kept my legs too stylish for medical attention. This woman should have just taken her comically small first-aid and left before she received a brutal, teary-eyed anger glare from me. I was having none of this. Then--look who shows up! It’s my mom, holding these rusty crutches that have been living in my basement for ten years and would probably give me tetanus if I put my full weight on them. They were covered in spider webs, and could have been straight off the set of the second season of American Horror Story. I was already crying for multiple reasons, including pain, the possibility of amputation, and also Judgmental Ice Pack Woman, so being expected to put these bug-infested metal sticks under my armpits made me power cry. If I’m going to the hospital, it’s not going to be on crutches leftover from a Victorian mental institution that could unleash those spiders that lay eggs in your face at any moment.
Violet Gautreau Usually when you hear injury stories, they’re either really cool or really idiotic. There’s almost no middle ground. The cool injuries are usually extreme sports related, and there’s always an equally extreme blasé tone when the story is told. The level of casualness employed by these snowboarders and mountain bikers is just unfathomable to me. I’ll just be sitting in the general area of these sports kids with names like Brad or Jake or anything else with no more than four letters, and I’ll hear them talking with their sports posse about the time they fell off a mountain while doing a backflip on skis as if they were discussing what’s for lunch in the cafeteria. Come on, Brad. I think getting hurt in the same way James Bond might if he was at a ski lodge is worthy of a little more excitement than mystery meat cheeseburgers. If you get hurt while doing something that’s actually considered dangerous by the general population, I think you can brag a little. The reason why cool injuries that get signed neon casts fascinate me so much is because I’ve only seen the lame ones in real life. I guess that’s because the crowd I run with isn’t that extreme, unless you consider going out for Indian food on a Friday night after rehearsal for the school musical wild and crazy teen behavior. Most don’t. Anyway, all of our injuries are so idiotic they sound like rejected B storylines for the awkward middle child on a sitcom from the 1970s. Some prime examples are when my brother tore his meniscus at a callback for High School Musical. The meniscus isn’t something that you can get a cast for that your friends will all sign with little messages. You just get a wheelchair. A wheelchair gets you a freshman year of never having to walk to class because you’re pushed all the way to math, and spending your gym class in the nurse's office with cookies. These are both perks, but not really perks that are considered cool. Another example is my own sprained ankle. I sprained it by actually dancing, not just preparing to dance at a callback, so I think that 7
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June 22, y
earns me a little more street cred. However, I was tap-dancing at performing arts camp, so that street cred only takes me so far. I was in an advanced tap class, even though I probably should’ve been in an intermediate one, so that’s the first warning sign. That meant that I was body-checking my classmates by enthusiastically tapping the wrong way quite a lot, which is why it probably wasn’t surprising that when I entered the studio every morning with tap shoes in hand, I was greeted by some death glares. I’d like to apologize now, really high-strung 14-year-old boy who seemed kind of scared to be dancing with me because I kicked you in the shin that one time. I’m so sorry. Anyway, one day I was trying my best to get through our routine without inadvertently killing some poor theatre kid that just wanted to perform in Pippin later that week, and I heard this resounding snap. It wasn’t resounding in the sense that it was really loud, because it sounded more like a baby carrot being snapped than say, somebody’s arm being snapped in a turf war on the wrong side of town, but it was resounding in the sense that I knew exactly what had happened in that very moment. It was like an out-of-body experience when I fell, because I knew what would happen a fraction of a section before it did. My ankle was burning and probably swelling to approximately the size of Australia. I expected a little sympathy, but instead, I was greeted with some literal downward glances from kids in Into the Woods t-shirts. Maybe if I’d been injured while in the woods, as in the actual forest and not a collection of hand-painted trees inside a dusty theatre, I’d get a little more respect. But, I don’t really deserve that respect, considering I slipped on tap shoes instead of plummeting off the side of a mountain. I guess some of us aren’t destined for that cool, neoncast-wearing injury life.
Ross Ginsberg Thankfully I have never had a severe injury requiring immediate medical attention, but the worst pain I've ever felt was when I fractured my shoulder in the first game of the first season I ever played football. The two weeks prior to this injury was spent practicing with the other players every Thursday night. I was in great shape to begin a new hobby. I was decent at football and had the body of a lineman. I was put on a great team as well and could not wait to participate in my first game. The weather was gloomy but that didn’t spoil my excitement. I was benched for the first two quarters, waiting for my chance to shine. The anxiety was consuming me and soon that anxiety turned to nervousness. When I was called in to play, I was shaking. I could not keep my legs steady and had butterflies in my stomach. The whistle was blown and in a flash I was off, running to block the opposite team from progressing down the field. I thought the rest of the players were behind me so I went in for the tackle. I leaped towards the player with the football about to reach the end zone. I had been careful to analyze the situation to make sure that was the right choice, but I did not notice a teammate running in my blindspot. That teammate behind me had a similar plan. It was too late to abort and I was about to make impact with the opponent. My 8
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teammate leaped into the air and tackled myself and the opponent. I was in the middle of a sandwich of football players.
Sydni Lawrence When I answer the question, “what injuries have you had,” I start listing all my short-term injuries and that’s because I never really had any longterm injuries that had a special impact on me the way some peoples have. Yes I’m accident prone but I’ve never left an incident with growth plates or a cast. I guess my most severe injury would be the time I chipped the bone in my knee. Around 4th grade, I decided that I wanted to try being a tomboy, like a skater girl, so I used all my saved up money in my piggy bank and bought myself a skateboard. I absolutely did not know how to ride the thing whatsoever. When I brought my skateboard home, I couldn’t wait to try it out. I started to get the hang of it after a while, but then I fell right on my knee; no padding, no helmet. I know, not a very smart idea, especially for a small 5th grader like myself. It hurt more than just a scrape but since the cut itself wasn’t so bad, I didn’t think much of it and tried to walk it off. It was sort of sore for a couple of days, but it didn’t faze me dramatically. But that all changed the day my friend came over. She saw the brand new skateboard in the garage and immediately asked if we could play on it. I was showing her my “super cool moves” that I learned just a couple days before, which included balancing on it for more than ten seconds and making wide, choppy turns. As I was showing her how to do these things, I fell right on my knee; same knee, same spot. This time when I tried to get up, I couldn’t walk. It was like a hammer banging on my knee, causing me to collapse. There were no words for how much pain I was in. My sister and my friend had to help carry me inside the house so I could ice it. After a while, my friend got bored of just sitting on the couch and said, “Come on, get up, let’s do something.” Because of the excruciating pain I was in, I lashed out and said, “If you’re so bored, then just go home.” So she did. Later, I tried to take a shower but that didn’t go so well. With the help of my sister, I hopped into the shower but about 5 minutes in, I fell and that’s when my dad decided we needed to go to the hospital. It was late at night and my dad took me to the emergency room. After waiting about 45 minutes, the doctor finally called me in. He examined my knee and I got all the x-rays I needed. After reviewing the x-rays, the doctor soon discovered that I had chipped a bone in my knee and that I’d be needing crutches. Before this incident, I always wanted crutches because it seemed like a lot of fun. Besides the special treatment they receive, like getting to leave five minutes early from class, riding in the elevator, and having my own personal servant carry my books for me, I just wanted to play with them all the time. When the doctor left the room to get the crutches, my dad said to me, “Happy now? You’re finally getting crutches just like you wanted.” Being the immature 5th grader I was, I just stuck 9
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my tongue out at him. When the doctor told me I was going to need the crutches for two weeks, my initial reaction was “yay,” but as those two weeks progressed, that “yay” turned into “no way,” as in there is no way these two weeks could go by any slower. My hands started to cramp and my sides and armpits got burns on them from those damn crutches. One day in the cafeteria, I went to throw away my lunch but in between holding the brown bag, and managing to work the crutches, I completely wiped out, right there in the middle of the cafeteria. I swear like a million people came rushing towards me asking if I was okay. No, I wasn’t okay, I was socially humiliated. That was absolutely the most embarrassing thing to ever happen to me during my 5th grade career. Oh, that’s besides the time my dad thought it would be a genius idea to put pool noodles on my crutches to help my hands and armpits. It was a horrible idea because out of all the comfortable things you could put under your arms, pool noodles? Really? I got such bizarre looks from everybody in the halls. After this, I swore I never wanted crutches again. At the end of the day, everybody thought I chipped that bone in my knee due to the fact that I fell off a bike, because I was very embarrassed about what really happened. After all of this, I gave up trying to be a skater girl, because it wasn’t working well for me. But really, this whole issue was because of numerous skateboard accidents between me and the concrete. I guess you could say I’m more clumsy and accident prone than prone to traumatic injuries.
Nathalie Milstein Sometimes you don’t want to get out of bed because you know that means you have to face reality. Getting out of bed is like opening a really big and heavy door, to overall unwillingness and what we think to be disappointing and dreadful hours of the day. Getting out of bed means having to get ready for school before the sun comes up. Looking outside on a Monday morning and it still being pitch black makes everyone want to crawl back into bed. Getting ready for school eventually means making it to the building before 7:45, therefore implying that the ride to school is the second worst thing in the world. You sit in school thinking how life would be if you decided to fake a sickness and stay home, but then the idea of making up a whole day’s worth of work pops into your head and you start to look up from your desk in class and choose to just sit and suffer for the next 6 hours. What makes the time pass? Depends on the class. Getting up to leave the room just to get out of there sometimes helps. Constantly checking your phone, or maybe not even looking at a clock, both help, too. Some people actually enjoy school. But, let’s be honest, everyone has a favorite day of the 6-day cycle. It’s either that day where you don’t have the class you dread, or you have a super long free period. Eventually, you end up at home, but you lose all hope and just get back into bed immediately. You’re either going to wake up again at 9 and start panicking, or the next time you open your eyes, it’s 6 o’clock the next morning. I thought it would get better as we got older, but the work 10
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piles up and for some reason the days feel so much longer. It seems to be the same thing every day, all because we start by getting out of bed.
Josh Moskow I can hurt myself doing almost anything. I got hurt playing with PlayDoh. My most ridiculous “injury" was really my own fault. It was when I was 8 years old and went to Camp Nabby. I went to Camp Nabby for several years and I hated it. I felt like I was in prison all day. Luckily, Nabby wasn’t a large amount of my childhood summers. We (my bunkmates and I) were in the arts and crafts area and were molding things with Model Magic. Model Magic is kind of like Play-Doh. If I had the intelligence and wits I have now, I would’ve never done what I did. My 8-year-old brain and I decided I would make earplugs with them. I crafted myself the two earplugs and put them in my ears. I made them too small and I put them in too far. They were so small that once I put them in, they weren’t coming out. I tried getting them out but I didn’t even feel them in my ears anymore. I knew there was something wrong happening. I felt very nauseous and had a big headache. When I came home that day from camp, my dad said I didn’t look well. He took my temperature and everything but I didn’t have a fever. He didn’t know what was wrong. I didn’t think the Model Magic was causing this, but I was wrong. He brought me to the doctor and the doctor did the thing with the ear magnifier and said there was something really deep into my ears. He asked me if I knew what it was. I said I played with Model Magic that day. It was so far down in my ear canal that they couldn’t be taken out by tweezers. Dr. Krohn said I would have to the hospital to get them removed. The next thing I remembered was being in a hospital gown in a hospital bed getting sleep gas thrown at me. Everything was happening so fast. I was only 8 years old. As much as I felt anxious, I just wanted them to fix the problem I created. I had to be placed in an operating room for a pea size amount of Model Magic. I didn’t know how long I was under, but when I woke up from what felt different than sleep, it was an emptiness. I had no dream and I guess I felt dead. That was the only time I was put to sleep. The doctor handed me a clear container. Inside this clear container were the two small balls of Model Magic. I felt much better. The nausea was gone and the headaches were too. After the hospital, I went out to lunch with my mom and dad and remember getting this really good chocolate milk. I was happy to know that everything was going to be ok and the incident was something I could laugh about with my friends and my family. When I told my friends about what happened, they laughed and found it amusing. I did too. My parents were stressed about it because they had a young boy in the hospital for pieces of Model Magic in his ear. Compared to more typical injuries, like breaking a bone or something, my injury I had showed me that it is possible to get yourself hurt in any 11
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way. There are no signs this ever happened to me except the container of the pieces of Model Magic. I still have that container somewhere, with two pieces of Model Magic that made me go to the hospital.
Margot Reddy I can hurt myself doing almost anything. For whatever reason it's absolutely hilarious to the people in heaven or hell when I'm in pain or in a near death experience, so trying to dodge scenarios where I might end up miserable results in simple tasks that leave me with both physical and emotional scarring. When I was three, I was standing on my toilet (with the toilet cover over the seat) looking through my over-sink cabinet when I stepped on my own foot and fell off balance. I had tripped and now was allowing a short wave of panic to take over my body as I crashed to the ground. My head smacked against my bathtub and the collision sent an imaginary tiara of stars hovering above my skull. Instead of going to bed, as it was my bedtime, I was rushed to the hospital, but because I was three years old I probably enjoyed postponing my bedtime. I'm just one of those very accident prone people. No matter what, I might as well be trying to bungee jump without a bungee cord because everything ends in disaster. Even the simple task of taking off a sweatshirt results in some form of uncalled for pain. I was trying to take my sweatshirt off while talking on the phone; my hand slipped off of the hem of the shirt and caused me to punch myself in the eye. I dropped my phone in blood-visioned agony. Deciding that the pain should be aided, I ran to the kitchen and grabbed a pack of ice out of the freezer, but when I came back to the scene of the crime to find my phone, I tripped on it pressing the ice harder into my swollen eye. If I didn't have a black eye after I performed my first Einstein-level move, I did now. Lesson learned —any form of multi-tasking should be avoided. My biggest problem when it comes to injuries isn't that I don't think before I act, it has to do with the fact that I was born with two left feet and am the most clumsy person to walk the planet. I am always tripping on my own feet or losing my balance. It gets pretty hard at times, always having to concentrate to walk up and down a flight of stairs isn’t pleasant and either is the fear of going on the underground train and falling against some stranger because you’re physically not able to balance properly. I like to think of being accident prone as a disease. Once you are diagnosed with a disease, it doesn’t just disappear. Based on my encounters with the clumsy, accident prone mindset or lack of proper body control, it will never go away, and as time goes on it gets worse. Injuries to me are like enemies, and every so often I find myself with a new one. The only differences between being accident prone and having a disease is that when you have a disease, you caught it from something, 12
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June 22, y
but being accident prone isn’t transferred from one being to another. Maybe it’s a sickness that is all psychological. It’s almost like your brain is telling you to trip and fall, so you do. Or maybe it’s a lack of connection from your brain to your body. Maybe when you’re about to miss a step on the stairs your body is trying to tell you that you’re about to fall, but decides to tell you in a different language that isn’t comprehensible. What if all this time that was the real cause of injuries and clumsiness? Maybe being accident prone is like one of those disorders where it skips a generation or is present in your parent’s DNA, but doesn’t affect them. It’s actually quite hard living with clumsiness. Everywhere you go you have to make sure there aren’t any cracks in the sidewalk or table corners eyeing your pinky toe and hip bone. Yes, there is a struggle, but we who are cursed with this condition are managing through the difficulties. Although I find this perpetual clumsiness to be a burden with every injury that has been avoided by only centimeters, I am able to truly understand how lucky I am to have not lost all of my limbs yet. Together we can find a cure for this limiting disease of being injury prone.
Claire Silverman It’s hard to imagine dying. Just all of a sudden you stop existing. Your body is still there but you aren’t. What is it like after? Is there even anything after? What’s the point of living? Why am I here? Is there a reason? Why is it that I’m so scared of death? I so wish that I believed in an afterlife wholeheartedly, but I don’t, not really. Death is something that has plagued my mind since I could understand the concept. I used to hate going to bed when I was younger because my thoughts would inevitably end up being about death. I don’t really remember what it was that I would think about, but I do remember that it was on my mind constantly. Now I’m older and I’ve learned to push those thoughts far away at night, but there is one thing that’s still the same. I’m scared. I’m so utterly scared of dying. No, scratch that, I’m not scared of dying, I’m scared of no longer existing. Human lives are so short and there is nothing we can really do about it. It terrifies me to think that one day I will close my eyes and never open them again. That the world will continue to spin and I won’t be there. That one day I will be forgotten and that everything I will have achieved will be gone. This constant state of “existential crisis” is not helpful, nor is it the way I want to live my life. I guess maybe I could try to believe that we just go back to whatever we were before this life, or maybe we go on to a new one. If that’s the case, it’s still just as bad, because one thing I know for sure is that I don’t want to forget this life. But why do we even die? I get that eventually our cells stop reproducing like they used to, and that our heart stops beating, but why does our consciousness die? I don’t necessarily believe in souls and whatnot, but how come we haven’t figured out a way to transfer brains into other bodies, new bodies, so that we can keep living? I get that it goes against nature, and I’ve watched and read enough science fiction and Doctor Who to know that it usually doesn’t end very well, but can’t we at least figure out what being dead feels like? If it’s a feeling at all? I know 13
English 9/10, Ms. Keener
June 22, y
I’m only a teenager, and I supposedly have my whole life ahead of me, but you never know when a life will be cut short. Suffice to say, I don’t like the idea, well, the reality of death.
Luke Smith Sticks and stones may break my bones, but then again, so can a friend’s butt. So, a few years back, during Hurricane Sandy, I had a few friends over for a sleepover. Back in those days, I was living in New Jersey, and I was known as the “Sleepover King” of the neighborhood. Every weekend or so, my friends would come to my house, and throw a huge sleepover party. But, I digress. Miraculously, or should I say mysteriously, my house had power in my basement, so my friends and I did one of our favorite activities: turn off all lights, and plug in the strobe light. It was a Halloween decoration with this really annoying thunder sound. We tried to cover up the sound by throwing a pillow on it, but that didn’t work. Fortunately, our cheering, screaming, and music I was playing drowned the sound out. After the “problem” was fixed, we just spazzed out randomly and started fake fights because it looked like we were in slow motion, and slow motion was cool. I know, I know, we were idiots, but again, I digress. Then, someone accidentally clipped another person in the face. After that, a war broke out. Everyone was punching, kicking, and sitting on each other, all in slow motion. It was hilarious, until you ended up with someone’s behind on your face or their fist in your stomach. Then, after I fell down, someone else’s butt landed on my foot. The pain in my big toe was indescribable. I was barely able to keep my balance. I hobbled up the stairs and told my parents. They were no help, saying “Oh suck it up, it’ll get better tomorrow, stop whining about it, nyeh nyeh nyeh!” Well, surprise, surprise! Tomorrow rolled around, and my toe was still killing me. My parents went on the same rant, again and again and again. For how long exactly? THE NEXT EIGHT MONTHS! Only then, even after telling them my foot was fine, they took me to a doctor. The doctor said there was nothing wrong with my big toe, and my mom got all mad. She went on another rant saying “Oh you were being such a wimp there was nothing wrong with you nyeh stop lying about it nyeh!” Next thing I know, I was grounded for a solid week. No TV, no Xbox, no nothing because I was “lying” about getting hurt. By then, I had come to the conclusion that I either sprained or had broken my big toe, and it healed sans cast or brace. I came to another conclusion that my mom had no idea what “It hurt for the past 8 months” or “It feels fine now” mean, nor does she have any clue of medicine or injuries in the slightest. Well, at least she learned her lesson. A few months back, I sprained my ankle in football, and I was on 14
English 9/10, Ms. Keener
June 22, y
crutches for a while. At least this time around, it took my mom just 3 weeks to get a doctor’s appointment instead of half the year!
Ryan Van Fleet Sticks and stones may break my bones but plasma cars will always hurt me. I never knew that when I first got on a plasma car and swiveled around, that it could go so wrong so fast. One day with my friends when we were about 10 years old, I was just casually swiveling around on Orchard Lane, wind blowing through my hair and not a care in the world. Then, I hit this huge patch of loose gravel and scraped my knee as I've done many times, but this one was the worst. You would think that it would be acceptable to be going 25 mph on a plasma car and get my injury, but no. I was at a dead stop when I just ridiculously tipped over onto the road. You’re probably also thinking, “a plasma car could be high off the ground so he probably fell from a height to get that hurt.” But no. A plasma car is a little plastic car that you swerve around in that is barely 8 inches off the ground. After I fell and looked at my knee, I experienced a moment of shock and fear before a combination of worry and speed when I saw my knee and the huge chunk taken off of it. I saw it wasn't bleeding yet, but I knew it was about to…a lot. I didn’t want to wait and find out what it would look like, so I quickly rushed inside, leaving my friends and the plasma car, and attempted to stop the bleeding inside. It was almost disturbing that my mom was strangely excited to put her work as an ambulance volunteer to good use. I don't know how, but just from tipping over on to gravel, I scraped my knee so badly that I had to get it all wrapped up in medical tape and bandages to the point where I couldn't bend it that well. I still remember in school when people were yelling at me to walk up the stairs faster with my practically unbendable knee. After a while with the bandages, the wound started to heal, but there were little pieces of gravel still stuck in my injury and embedded in my knee. Let me tell you, it’s not fun to have gravel be scraped out of your knee. It felt like little pieces of death being ripped from under my sore skin where they were embedded to the point that they were basically part of my knee. My godfather Dave said he got most of it out when he checked out the injury that other injuries laugh at on the playground. But sometimes I worry whether or not there is still a little piece of gravel in there as a souvenir and a reminder of the incident. The whole injury was such a pain, in both ways, and a hassle to go through. The most annoying part was how I got that injury from something so stupid! After the incident and after I was healed, I made my dad pave that loose patch of gravel so no one would have to go through the dumbest kind of pain I experienced. If I knew a plasma car could do so much damage, I would never have gotten on one in the first place. You don’t choose the plasma car life, the plasma car life chooses you. 15
English 9/10, Ms. Keener
June 22, y
Emma Warshofsky When I see people making their way down the hallway on crutches, I immediately become jealous of them. I know that envy probably shouldn’t be my initial reaction when I see an injured person, and feeling bad for them would be much more normal, but I’ve secretly always wanted to break, sprain, or fracture something. One reason to explain the absence of injuries in my life might be that I don’t play any intense sports, but still, I think it’s safe to say most people my age have been injured at some point, especially if they are as clumsy as I am. Maybe I have abnormally strong bones or I am extremely cautious, but the closest I have been to being injured is accidentally stabbing myself with a pencil, falling and getting a scar on my knee, or bruising my foot by dropping my math textbook on it. The hospital is a completely foreign place to me. I’ve probably only been to one twice, including the day I was born. Besides the part about actually being hurt, having an injury seems pretty fun. In elementary school, any kid’s dream was to ride in the mysterious elevator, but we were only allowed to if we were on crutches. In middle school, I was always jealous of the people that left each class five minutes early because they made up a lame excuse about taking a long time getting to each class because of their crutches. Now, when I see injured people in the hallway, they always have a friend with them acting as a servant and carrying their backpack for them. I want to go in forbidden elevators, leave class early, and make someone carry my bag. And don’t even get me started on crutches. The ideal body part to injure is somewhere on the leg, ankle, or foot because of crutches. I don't care how many people complain about them, they are so much fun. Probably anybody that has ever used crutches has complained about sore armpits, but if I ever had the opportunity to use crutches, I would just throw some mini pillows on top of them and enjoy them, because normal walking is boring. I feel like the special treatment from injuries is totally worth the pain, but I can’t really say for sure. I have no clue what it feels like to break an arm or even fracture a pinky. I’ve obviously experienced pain in my life—I’ve had countless papercuts and bruises—but something about a person’s bone literally snapping in half sounds like a torturous and traumatizing event. My many falls and scrapes on the scale of pain have ranged from a one to a four, but I have yet to experience an eight, nine, or ten, which is classified as the worst pain imaginable. The day I finally injure myself will be a horrifying day. Considering I want to break down and cry every time I get a papercut, I can’t imagine how I will ever be able to deal with a more substantial injury. One day, when I actually break a bone, I will probably regret ever wanting to be injured. Maybe one day I will pretend to have a broken leg so I can enjoy the benefits of being injured without actually experiencing the pain.
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English 9/10, Ms. Keener
June 22, y
Liam Whitehouse Sticks and stones may break my bones but contact sports break them more often. I have had all my injuries at the hands of my favorite activities such as hockey and lacrosse. Something about the sports draws me back for more after every injury. I have been playing these sports since I was 3, so I knew possible injuries was what I signed up for. Every time I visited the hospital the first question I asked was “when can I play again?” My least favorite injury was the most recent. My sprained ankle. Last year, I was in New Hampshire for a hockey tournament, and went into the boards for the puck. One of the kids on the other team lost his footing and drilled his shoulder into my ankle causing me to fall and my ankle to bend the other way. The pain felt as if a forest fire erupted in a small portion of my body. I played the second and third period in pain. After the game I took my skate off to an abnormally sized ankle. I tried to take a step and fell in pain. I took 5 Advil and hoped to my car. The doctor asked me “how did you play the rest of the game?” I was put in an air cast and crutches for the next 2 months. Finding this out made me feel 10 times worse. Danny carried my stuff around for the next 2 months. What a guy. The year before when he couldn’t walk I carried his stuff, so I guess we are even. I feel the worst pain that that injury was watching my teammates play while I watched. The only thing left of that injury is dull pain when I play hockey. Another one of my injuries occurred when I played lacrosse goalie. During practice a couple years back on a Friday the 13th, I was playing in a shooting drill and took a fast shot to my left hand, breaking a bone and shattering the rest of my lacrosse season. This felt as if a sumo wrestler sat on my hand. I took myself out of the drill while my dad yelled at me to suck it up. At least my mom was a little more sympathetic. I had my mom drive me to the hospital. I knew it was broken before we got there. We sat in the waiting room for a while holding an icepack on my hand while we waited to be treated. That doctor said 5 weeks without sports. Since back then, my dad was the coach, I had to show up at every game and watch my team play the sport I love while I watch from the sidelines with my hand in a cast. To this day, I still lack mobility in my left hand, and when I try to move it, my hand hurts. Every one of my injuries comes from these sports. And the worst pain comes from missing out on the sports I love. As I was healing from both injuries, I had multiple people asking me when I would return to that sport and saying I was important to the team. That made it feel a little better, but also more sad, seeing as how I was still out.
Danny Yoon The most devastating grade I’ve ever received was a -4 for a social studies test in 6th grade. Although I left the whole test blank and was a 17
English 9/10, Ms. Keener
June 22, y
jerk to the teacher, I could’ve gotten some points for writing my name. Who gets a grade below a zero? I’m the first person that I know that's gotten a negative score. Fine, I’ll be completely honest, I completely deserved that score, but I still wasn’t content with it. However, what happened next was one of the dumbest, but best things in my life. After we received our tests, I started making random screeching noises and talked to my friends (they failed as well), so the teacher told me to talk to him after class. When he told me this, I got furious because my crush was in the same class, and I didn’t want to be embarrassed in front of her. Then, for some reason, I took the tough guy role and talked back. He then got frustrated and straight up kicked me out of class. Knowing myself in middle school, he didn’t tell me what to do, so I left and spent the rest of the period playing basketball in the gym. The next day, I was ready for a lecture, a phone call to my parents, and a visit to the principal's office, but he either completely forgot about what had happened or let me go, because I only received the grade and no punishment. If he did forget that somehow, I would’ve given him an F as a teacher. Due to this, I then never took that class seriously for the rest of 6th grade and ended up with a C+ on my report card. Then again, it’s middle school, I enjoyed my life, dated my crush, and broke up after a week because it turns out that she was extremely clingy, annoying, and dumb, but cute. I could never have time with my friends. If I did go out with them, she always had to follow just to make sure I did everything that she wanted. Overall, even though I got a terrible grade, it was so worth it.
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