My Stories

Kahse Mandarino

Mr. O’Brien

British Literature

21 October 2013

Precarious Pennies and Bad Balls

            When I was four years old, I was adventurous, spontaneous, and curious. Any object in front of me became a challenge. I always had to touch, smell, and especially taste them. One day, I was admiring and studying a regular penny. It was very shiny and looked tasty. For some reason I had a habit of putting objects in my mouth. So, by habit, I put the penny in my mouth. While the penny was in my mouth, the urge to sneeze came over me. When I was breathing in, the penny shot down my throat and lodged itself in my esophagus. In my life, I had never done anything so stupid and it resulted in the worst pain I ever experienced. I had to immediately go to the hospital where the x-ray showed Abe Lincoln looking out. The pain of the penny was equivalent to someone forcing a hammer and knife through your esophagus behind your sternum. For me, every wasted minute seemed like an hour. Finally, Dr. Tung operated on me and removed the penny with a long telescope.

            My childish behavior didn’t stop there. About a week later, an incident happened again. I had tiny Lego-like toys in my room. These toys that I was playing with on a particular day were called Bionicles. The toy came with little tiny balls that I could shoot from the Bionicle’s arm. Since putting things in mouth was a pertinent habit of mine, I plopped the little greenish yellow ball in my mouth. To no surprise, I accidentally swallowed the ball. Luckily, this object didn’t get logged in my throat, but I had enormous stomach pains the whole day and night. I kept repeating the same thought in my head, “Don’t tell mom! Don’t tell mom!” I was feeling extremely nervous and guilty. Even though I was in pain, I could not bring myself to tell my mom because I know my mom would get upset with me. It is nearly impossible to sneak anything by my mom. I was very fortunate in the fact that my mom never found out what happen, but the worst was how the ball got out. Lets just say the ball came in one way, and out the other.

This penny and Bionicle ball holds special meaning to me because it represents my mistakes, my triumphs, and my need to experiment. I love learning knew things that other people didn’t know or wanted to find out. Venturing into untouched territories is what I like to do, but this can lead to mistakes. From those mistakes, I learn how to avoid dangerous situations and how to accomplish new adventures. The penny and Bionicle ball are special to me because it is a reminder of my curiosity. The quote that says, “curiosity kills the cat,” represented me that day. If the shinny, copper penny went down my windpipe, I might have died. I also look at it as an enemy that I conquered. I will cherish my penny for a long time, the ball not so much. It is a reminder of the scary and lucky events of that September day.

Cause You Had a Bad Day

It was a normal day in Tredyffrin Eastown Middle School. The skies are blue, the birds are chirping, and the students are learning. My class and I were nearing the end of a tedious school year, but little did I know it would turn out to be an abysmal day.

I had just recovered from a horrible stomach bug. I was bed ridden for 3 days with nonstop vomiting, probably the second worst I have ever felt in my entire life. After I got rid of the dreadful virus, I came to school on Thursday. The night before, there was a torrential downfall of rain. As my mom was driving me to school, we noticed that there were many branches down, roads blocked, and drains clogged. Not thinking much of it, my mom dropped me off and went straight to Philadelphia to my dad’s office to help him at work. When I reached the door to school and saw the sign that said, “TWO HOUR DELAY,” I went irate.  I had no way of calling my parents because they won’t allow me to get a phone until I get to high school. I usually get to school very early too, so I didn’t notice that was a lack of traffic and cars parked in the parking lot. So I waited one hour sitting on the bench outside my school doors waiting for a teacher or janitor to open the school. From that point on, I realized that this day was going to be horrible.

The school day wasn’t overly lousy until lunch came around. One week ago I got into trouble with my substitute teacher Mr. Poche. He is a heavyset fellow that wears suspenders and the biggest pair of reading glasses. During class, my friend Eric brought a shocking pen into the class. He decided it would be funny to trick me into shocking my self. I was unfamiliar with the technology of the shocking pen, so I fell for Eric’s sly tricks. When I shocked my self with the pen, I involuntarily threw the pen, which hit a girl in the eye. Since Mr. Poche and I don’t like each other, he wrote a note to my teacher saying that I was very disruptive. So when lunch came around a week later, my punishment was to carry tanks filled with water and place them outside in the playground for some science project. This was by far the stupidest, most obtuse, and extensive punishment I had to do in school. The worst part about it was that the playground was far away from school, the tanks were extremely heavy, and the humidity was at like 100%. After I put the tanks outside, I came into school soaked in sweat and covered in this greenish goo witch dripped over the tanks as I was carrying them. So for the rest of my classes my shirt was stained and crinkled from all the sweat. When I began to think, what else could go wrong, the worst possible ending to the day happened.

            After my cruel and unusual punishment, there were still about 2 hours left in school. I was in the hall messing around with my friends before class starts. I was in a particular area of school where a staircase goes half way up a floor, changes direction, and then continues to the second floor. Where the stairs changes direction, there is a fire exit door with an alarm that goes off when someone opens it. My friends and I were playing around that door for some reason I can’t remember. My friend bumped me into the door and I accidentally triggered the alarm. I, by mistake, made the whole school run outside and stay outside for 2 hours! Fire trucks, police cars, and other emergency vehicles came as if there is a fire. They were puzzled as to why the alarm went off. They checked all the cameras to make sure no one pulled the alarm, and no one did. Fortunately for me there was no camera where I triggered the alarm. There worst part about it was that it rained for about an hour, so the entire school was drenched, including me. No one ever figured out it was me, but that day was the absolute worst. That concluded one of the worst weeks of my life and definitely the worst day I have ever experienced.