Hey there. this is a paper I had to write for english. I thought it was pretty good, so I will now click twice (in rapid succession) on the third lowest icon on the right side of my desktop (microsoft word), click once on the file tab, click once on the open tab, scroll with the middle button of my mouse three quarters of the way down, click once on the document entitaled “english short story.doc”, click the “open button” to the bottom right of the window opened just seconds before, hit ctrl-a, right click once on the selected words, click once on the second option in the tab previously opened by right clicking (copy), stop writing and hit paste.
” Approximately four years ago I was very good friends with a tall, somewhat clumsy twelve year-old named Garrett Brooks. I use the past tense above because he and his family moved away about two years ago. Garrett and I were the best of friends, we did everything from the trampoline to basketball. Though his moving away was tragic, I will not be writing about his departure from Salem. My topic is on one of the moments we shared together here in Oregon. I suppose I’ll start now.
Garrett and I, though friends, got into quite a few fights. Not only would we abuse each other verbally, but physically as well. The incident I am writing on is, in my opinion, a result of irrational, yet well-thought-out, violent behavior on Garrett’s part. The painful event did not ruin our friendship, but only because I did not realize the devious effort he had put forth that day.
It all happened one day during the summer when Garrett and his older brother Spencer invited me and my older brother Daniel to their house to have some fun in their backyard pool. Back then we were within walking distance, but me, being only ten, needed an escort of at least three people on scooters, or one in the car. The car would be driven by one of my two parents, so it was not a difficult choice to make. Garrett and Spencer would pick us up on their scooters and we would ride to their house.
When I saw my buddies ride their self-propelled vehicles to our house I became very excited. They had been in Colorado the previous two weeks, and we had not seen them since their homecoming.
As they approached our home my brother and I went out to meet them. We greeted them politely, but didn’t say much; there was a pool at their house, and talking wastes precious time.
As we pedaled we came across a gigantic hill that usually only our macho brothers would ride down while Garrett and I would stumble behind on foot. This time would be different though. I planned on joining them. I heard the car horn at about halfway down. Looking back, I saw a brown Volvo attempting to get my attention. Unfortunately gravity did not need my attention to keep working. I fell hard on the pavement after colliding with the unsatisfactorily placed stop sign. I ended up walking the rest of the way.
When we arrived at their house, Garrett’s parents seemed very concerned about my skinned knee. They offered to let me watch T.V instead of playing outside with my buddies. Swayed by peer pressure, I chose the pool over The Three Stooges. That was a mistake.
The pool was boring, so we ended up having squirt gun fights in their backyard. We chose teams and bases to fight from. Garrett and I paired up, and he suggested we use the tree house as our base. As I climbed up the home-made ladder I noticed that there was no trap door. This bit of seemingly miscellaneous information did not effect my readiness for fun. Though looking back now, it should have. Being very young, Garrett and I made only one rule: “No Using The Hose!”. With the tree house being our base, the rule was easy follow. For our ground-bound opponents however, it easy to break.
I was acquainted with the hose water for only seconds. To this day I’ve no idea why, but I saw orange as I free-fell from the tree house. Orange then pain.
I hit the ground hard. “The trap-door”, I thought. But thinking was no use at this point. Pain was taking over. I tried expressing my pain with a scream, but did so ineptly because of the air the tree roots had pushed out of my lungs.
Garrett was still about fifteen feet up when I opened my eyes, but was climbing down at a rapid pace. I expected to see a hint of worry in his eyes, perhaps more. But instead I was greeted with short, rapid giggles. I was in the worst pain of my life, and my BEST friend was laughing. This was uncanny. At the time I thought it was simply a result of immaturity and incapacity to understand physical suffering of this extent. Looking back on the incident now I realized that he was chuckling at the fact that his evil scheme had succeeded: He knew of our brothers’ weak-mindedness, therefore knowing they would be unable to resist the temptation the garden-hose emitted, causing them to cheat. He also knew of my lack of coordination and hate for hose water, therefore knowing the high-powered water would disorient me, causing me to stumble. And worst of all, he suggested that we take the tree house as our base. The one with the broken trap door.
After my near devastating plummet to the ground we unanimously decided to go inside and watch The Three Stooges. I am not positive, but am fairly sure that this was his motivation– his goal.
However, if that is the case I hold no hard feelings; Those three weirdies are funny.”
