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Final Copy: Nonfiction Writing

Author’s note:

This exercise in creative writing has been an equally frustrating, rewarding, and thought-provoking experience. At first, I thought this would be a relatively simple, 600 word assignment. As such, I chose a one of the initial prompts, that to begin each sentence with the word that preceded it. After a few sentences, I knew this would be a puzzling task. Each phrase had to be rearranged to follow this format accurately. As a result, the post at times reads awkwardly, with seemingly inexplicable structures thrown into the text. However, as a whole, I think it reads well, and demonstrates a proficiency in imagination.

As the assignment progressed, I decided to attempt to lengthen this unnatural writing style as long as I could. I lasted about 400 more words – for a total of 1,000 – before it became too arduous of a task, too rooted in the minutiae of switching words around, to warrant any more time. To complete the post, and to stick with the theme of my childhood, I decided to add a vignette from a specific moment of my early life – one of my first vivid memories – with a focus on detail, dialogue, and an attempt at nonfiction storytelling.

Due to all of these factors, this post does not read like a fluid story, nor is the writing exemplary of best work. No, this was, more than anything, an experiment. At times, it reads like a stream of consciousness, at others it’s a confusing collection of thoughts. Overall, however, it served as an exercise in creative writing, a privilege I do not often have the opportunity to complete in an academic setting.

***

I don’t really know the story of how I was born. Born was I on April fourth, 1995. 1995 is a significant year in many ways: it started on a Saturday, a karaoke fire in Taiwan killed 64, and Jacques Chirac was elected as the President of France. France is the country about which my mother is a Professor. Professor Silverman – my mother – gave birth to me on April fourth, 1995 in State College, Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania is the original home to neither my mother nor my father. Father Berkman – my dad – was also present at my naissance.  Naissance is traditionally a French word: a language I started studying about ten years after my birth. Birth is something that I experienced on April fourth, 1995. 1995, the year in which I was born was a significant year – but you already know that, as this is getting redundant. Redundancy is something one wishes to avoid while writing, even if each sentence must start with the word that preceded it. It, according to my parents, was a rainy day on which I was born.

Born into this world, my first word was not “hamburger.” A hamburger, however, almost forced my father to miss my entrance into this world. World hunger may be bad, but my father wanted a hamburger while waiting for my mother to go into labor. Labored by my father’s absence, my mother went into labor while my father fetched his meat. “Meet me in the hospital room,” was what my father heard on his phone as he was eating. Eating quickly, he ran back up to the hospital room just in time to see baby Ben become a little boy. Boy, that was a cheesy story.

The story goes that had I not been born on April fourth, my mother would have needed a cesarean section, as I was nearly three weeks late. Late, according to my mother, was better than never. Never did she anticipate me being so late, but I was. “Was I worth the wait?” I once asked her. Her response, relievingly, was yes.

Yes, I emerged from my mother’s womb into a warm blanket on April fourth. April fourth, 1995 was also the day on which there was a large fire in a barn, fifteen miles from my hospital- the largest fire in years. Years later, exactly eighteen to be exact, on April fourth, 2013 there was another large fire in another barn, also fifteen miles from where I live. Living through two fires, the first on the day I was born, and the second on the day I became a man, fire has become a special symbol, a unique omen, for my family and me.

We discovered the second fire one morning, while reading the newspaper during breakfast. Breakfast time, in the Berkman household, is often a silent affair: everyone is immersed in either a paper, a magazine, or the news. News is a valuable thing to become acquainted with every morning. This morning, the morning of my eighteenth birthday, we scanned the local newspaper, The Centre Daily Times. Times sure have changed in the many years I’ve read the CDT: the paper’s quality has worsened significantly, and the news it contains is often unoriginal, uninteresting, or simply poorly written. Written, however, in the corner of the “Breakfast Briefing” section was a short, fifty world article with the headline “Local Barn Fire Destroys Property”, or something like that.

That, however, was enough to spark my father’s interest.

“Out of interest,” he asked me, “didn’t a barn burn down the day you were born as well?”

Well immersed in a copy of the New York Times, his question  surprised me. “Me — you’re asking me?” I clarified. “Yes, I very well remember that did occur.”

“Occurrences like those are rare,” my father responded. “Rare enough that you wouldn’t expect them to happen again. However, it happened again last night, the evening before your eighteenth birthday.”

Birthday boy Ben was shocked to hear of such a coincidence. “Coincidentally, I was just reading about wildfires out in California in this issue of the Times.” Times like these are oft documented throughout the Berkman household — the newspaper clipping of the two separate barn burning incidences are hung on our refrigerator, on clipping in front, the other after.

After I was born, I was released from the hospital and moved into my first home. That home is not where I call home now. Now, my parents live in a more isolated, residential part of town. Town — the “borough of State College” — however, is where I now live, as a student on campus. Campus living, in a sense, has brought my 18 residential years in State College full circle.

Circling in on this fact, my mom and I remarked on this realization the day before I moved into school and bid my parents good-bye.

“By moving into the dorms,” she said, “you’ll be living less than a mile from where you did as an infant; isn’t that funny?”

Funny wasn’t the operative word I was looking for in that circumstance, so I instead decided to humor my mother by responding, simply, “hilarious, mom, I know.”

“Know that I’ll miss you, and that I want you to be safe,” she said, in typical motherly fashion. “But also have fun despite all of your work and labor.”

Labored by the fact that I’d be living a mere mile from my first home and less than three from my current abode — it felt like I’d still be living under my parent’s watch — her words of warning struck a disconnect.

“Disconnected from you, I will not be,” I responded to her, easing many of my mother’s qualms.

[Note to reader: Here I’m switching style to “descriptive narrative” because 1500 words beginning each sentence with the word that ended the previous sentence is too strenuous to be effective.]

Continuing with the theme of my formative year’s, here’s a brief vignette from my childhood:

I associate two things with the town of Great Neck, New York, a small city on Long Island: traffic and rain.

It was doing both of these this late August afternoon.

Eight years old, I exited the movie theatre in the classic American strip mall with my two cousins and uncle, who resided within the cities limits.

I was visiting before school began for the year, enjoying a weekend in suburbia before the hectic rush that accompanies a new semester.

After the movie — “Pirates of the Caribbean”, I believe — we ran across the parking lot, dodging pellets of rain along the way. We reached the car, a blue Toyota Corolla, soaking wet, but in good spirits that we would be soon returning to the safe and dry confines of my cousin’s home.

But just as we were about to back out of the parking spot, I noticed I was missing my sweatshirt, a prized Reebok hoodie, that had become my favorite article of clothing.

I opened the window, craning my head out the door to see if I had left it behind during the sprint.

There it was! A speck of red in the desolate, puddle-ridden parking lot.

But my uncle did not see that I had stuck my head out the window. In fact, he only noticed that water was entering the vehicle, and he was not pleased. Immediately, he closed the window from his driver-seat controls.

The window, propelled by electronic gears, pushed up on my neck, which was still extended out the window longingly looking for my Reebok.

The relentless window reached my Adam’s apple, pushing deep into my trachea.

“Stopppp” I yelled, or more properly moaned, as the plastic window stifled my voice box.

My cousins, who were also seated in the back seat, noticed as well. But my uncle wasn’t aware of what needed to be stopped.

He pressed on, driving the window farther into my neck, suppressing now not only my vocal capabilities, but now also my ability to breathe. Miraculously, I slipped a finger between my throat and the window, and using the inner-found strength of a chiseled body-builder, I pushed the window back down, proving man can conquer technology.

I collapsed, exhausted from the struggle. It was only then that my largely clueless uncle realized his faux-pas.

But I rallied, made a full recovery, and sustained virtually no lasting injuries. It was a horrific event, and now one often mentioned at family reunions.

Comments

  1. Lori Bedell says:

    I have a feeling this was painful for you. Thanks for the effort! 🙂

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