Vignette

Ah, the summer days. Crisp breezes in juxtaposition with the blazing sun…what more is there to ask for? The year is 1997 and I am six years old. After a restless night, I practically sleepwalk to my family’s pathfinder, eager for what lies ahead. I have everything with me including a gameboy and “magic blanket” because I know I am in for a long ride. We perform our annual ritual before the excursion, stopping at the diner in Park Ridge, New Jersey for a 6 AM breakfast. Pancakes and scrambled eggs, my morning anthem, appears in front of me in matter of minutes. As I am sitting at the table savoring the different flavors within my dish, I am told to hurry up since getting a “head start” is imperative. Back to the car my sister, my mother, my father, and I go.

Seconds seem like minutes, minutes seem like hours, and hours seem like days. “How much longer ‘till we get there?”, my sister and I would constantly ask my father. No matter how far away we were, my father would provide the same answer time and time again, “Looks like we have another fifteen minutes to go”. We’ve tried everything to keep ourselves occupied including playing the license plate game…twice. Finally, I began seeing road signs indicating our desination is near.

Wildwood, New Jersey! Horray, we have made it! My father knows the town so well that he navigates the backstreets without a map in hand. We pull into the pyramid motel, owned by Uncle Anthony and prepare to have an incredibly week long adventure. Nights on the boardwalk and fireworks overwhelm my memories from years past and know that this year will be nothing less. Perhaps the best part about the trip is spending the nights by the ocean with my family by my side.

Today, Wildwood New Jersey is far different from what I remember. My family no longer owns the motel and is now owned by completely different people. Every building is practically a skyscraper and the boardwalk is simply not what it used to be. My childhood preserved in this town has essentially been lost due to construction and updates in the area. If I had the opportunity, I would make my experiences in Wildwood forever.

The Things I Carry

The first chapter of the novel The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, discusses different objects soldiers carried and the significance of these objects. As a student, I also carry things with me on a daily basis. Inside my bag, one would find several binders for my more important classes: one for English, one more calculus, one for physics, and one for chemistry. Overall, these four binders take up the majority of the space in my backpack but they carry the most useful information. One would also find a folder for each of these four classes and additional folders for my economics and public policy courses. These do not take up much space but they seldom carry anything of value to me; they are simply organizational tools. A graphing calculator is also nestled in my sack. This is used for three out of my seven classes and therefore is very useful. Pens, pencils, a Macbook, and gym clothes are also often readily available to me. All the belongings I carry weigh a total of twenty five to thirty pounds. Unlike the soldier’s belongings in the novel, the importance of mine do not correlate to their weight. My calculus binder might as well weigh a ton but I find my physics binder (it is much lighter) to be more important to me since I aspire to become an engineer. Also, my graphing calculator only weighs several ounces but is way more valuable to me than all my folders, pens, and pencils combined. Finally, the Macbook I carry is undoubtedly the most useful tool I use. If I needed to, I could almost survive in school using only this object alone.
Every day, I also “carry” many intangible things too. One of the most prevailing intangible objects is stress. Schoolwork, my part time job, and college admissions are all beginning to take their toll on my mental state. Every day, I must be conscious to complete all of my assignments to be successful academically; I hope this will help me become accepted into the colleges I have applied to. In addition to this, I must also make time to hold a part time job. Some days after school I am expected to work six hours which leaves little time to concentrate on academics. Consequently, I must be completely organized at all times making sure to take advantage of every free moment. At times, it feels like I am in a circus ring trying to juggle work and more work. On top of all of this, I must dedicate some time to my friends and family, of course. The constant planning going inside my mind is something I will never be able to “let go of”.