Close Calls

Acknowledgements

Students composed the personal narratives collected in this volume as part of their work for English I at the Environmental Charter School. The stories featured in this collection are just a small sample of the writing the ninth-grade students submitted. We hope you enjoy this collection.

Table of Contents

The Moment I Got Stung by a Bee ……. N. Cephas

Grandma’s Elephant …………..........Dominic Noble

Days with my Great Grandma ….Ja’nyah Williams

be faster than the rest of my team because of my genetics only to realize that would not be the case. If you want to be better than most, you have to work harder too. When I was 12 and first started track, I wanted to be a sprinter. My coach insisted that I had the form for long-distance running, which elling me to be careful (I didn't hear him in time), I pushed the mulch over with a stick I found one, and one of them stung me!

My dad saw and heard me scream, and he raced to take me inside. I was crying, and he quickly put and bandaid on. He had to drive me to the Walmart nearby to get medicine for it. As he was picking me up to drive me, I was grabbed at the doorway and I yelled, “I

DON'T WANT TO GO OUTSIDE EVER AGAIN!” I was scared of the bees.

He did successfully drag me out the door. After we got the medicine and we were safely home, I saw my dad out the window pouring boiling hot water on the nest.

Grandma’s Elephant

By Dominic Nobel

This story takes place in my grandma's house, about 4 years ago. My cousin and I usually played with the dog in the house, running around and playing hide and seek. At my grandma’s house, there are two living rooms and two hallways, one that directly connects them and another which loops into them. We would run around with the dog in both spaces. This dog wasn't an ordinary small puppy; it was a muscular white pitbull with black spots named ‘Brutus’. It wasn't easy to get him to chase after us either.

We had somewhat of a plan to get him to chase us, like a kind of ritual. We would start hitting his cage so it would clatter and ring a bunch. He loved this cage, it was like a miniature house for him. When we hit it, it

didn't matter if he was sitting inside or in the next room, he’d always come searching for whoever hit his little home. He wouldn't harm us if we did, just chase us around and stuff.

One day when we were playing with Brutus, we accidentally knocked down one of my grandma's clay elephants, and it broke! My cousin immediately knew what to do even though, it was kind of shocking. “Get the dustpan!” she said, and as I hurry to get it she went in the other room and grabbed a broom.

It took us some time to collect all the pieces and sweep them up in the dustpan. We put the broken clay elephant in a garbage bag, praying my grandma would never find it…

When she got home we tried to talk to her less than usual, just watching TV and eating chips. The moment she went to take out the trash was the scariest part of that day.

Thanks to my luck she never found out. My grandma is usually the type of person to be really observant and talkative, so I was kind of shocked that she didn't end up finding out before we left. I still think about it to this day, and I often feel guilty thinking about that

elephant. I suppose that even if she did find out, she didn’t care that much, but stuff like that as a child sticks with you. Even if I broke something now, I think it would probably stick with me forever. ❖

Days with my Great Grandma

By Ja’nyah Williams

When I was little my mom, my brother and I used to go to my great grandma's house a lot. We would go every two to three weeks. My brother and I had a great relationship, but sometimes we would fight. He would do things like screaming and yelling, and when I would tell him no he would start crying and tell my mom. My mom would obviously take his side because he was younger, which was annoying, so I would just go do something else. He would follow me everywhere which made me so mad. My grandma would tell him to stop messing with me, but he was five and didn’t listen. Sometimes I just wanted to punch him in the face. But we still found a way to get along if there was something we really wanted.

Every time we would go to my great-grandmother’s house, it always smelled like cookies. She had a jar of cookies that looked like a frog. She would give each of us just one cookie, but when she was talking to my mom we would try to steal some. My brother and I would debate whether or not we should take the cookies.

“Should we actually take the cookies? Grandma said not to,” my brother once said.

“Yes, I want more cookies,” I replied.

“Me too but should we just ask for more?”

“Let's just go and get some more!” I encouraged.

We would be upstairs, so we would have to sneak down just to get the cookies. We would stumble out of the bedroom trying not to make too much noise. Then we would go down the stairs. My brother would always trip. My grandma and mom would ask us what we were doing, and we would just tell her that we were playing around. She of course would tell

us not to play on the stairs because it's dangerous.

The cookies were on the very back of the counter, so we had to climb up to get them. We would never get caught though! We would grab at least two cookies for each of us. We didn’t want to take a lot because she would notice.

With our cookies quickly eaten, we would return to the fun of our day at great-grandma’s house. Her house was very big and had a big yard which we used to play in. We used to play Uno with my grandma too. I would always win. Then we would sit and play on her phone or watch tv. Sometimes we would end the day with a movie night.

After the movie was done we would get our hugs and kisses. Then we would go upstairs to go to sleep.