..\WINDOWS\Desktop\Composition 1 Portfolio Presentation.ppt
Rachel Sand
Personal Narrative
October 2, 2000
The Crush
It all started when I was in first grade and Andrew was in kindergarten. The
kindergarten class had graduation and my mom was the teacher. She needed to use my
teddy bear for a song and he just happened to pick mine. From that point on he was
always trying to get my attention and it didn’t matter how he did it.
As we got older, he tried to become my best friend and my boyfriend. For
example, one day when I was in third grade, we were taking class pictures, and my mom
made me wear a dress to school. I was already embarrassed by that, and he made it even
worse when he got down on one knee and proposed to me in front of the whole class. I
wanted to crawl in a hole and die. The worst part about that was that he even had a ring to
give me. Well of course I said, “ no”, but because of the way I am, I took the ring
anyway. After that day, he got worse and I was getting more annoyed by him.
When I was in the fifth grade, we finally weren’t in the same classroom, and I
thought that things would get better. It turned out that his sister was in the sixth grade
and she kept telling me to go out with him. He would always come and sit by me at
lunch, and he would come and play with me at recess also. My friends thought that it was
the funniest thing, and they would just urge him on.
In school he wasn’t very smart and he didn’t try at all. That bothered me because I
tried and I wanted to get good grades. He was always smarting off to the teacher, and he
never handed in his work on time. It got so bad that his older sisters would have to come
to class everyday after school to get his assignments and to make sure that he did them.
We had a counselor that came to our school every Thursday and all of the girls in
my class would go and talk to her about the week and how it was going. On one
Thursday though, Andrew decided that he needed to talk to her at the same time as all the
girls did and we all got into a huge fight. He was very mad at me and he left me alone for
a long time after that. In a weird sort of way I was disappointed about that. I think that I
was starting to like him but I never wanted to admit that to anyone, not even myself.
It was the summer of ‘95’ and I hadn’t heard or seen from him for quite some
time. By the middle of June I was beginning to wonder what had happened to him. Then
one day I decided to go to a baseball game in town. I didn’t know at the time that
Andrew played baseball. The team won and after the game I talked to Andrew for what
seemed like forever. We talked about everything. We talked about the past and how he
had proposed to me. It was a good afternoon, and it felt great to talk to him again.
It was now about the end of June. My father, my brother, and I had to go to the
dentist one beautiful morning and just as we were leaving town we heard the fire alarms
go off. We really didn’t think much of it because it had been really dry and a lot of
farmers were burning their old hay bales. So we just figured that one probably got out of
control. But for some odd reason I felt really weird when those trucks left town. So we
just went on to Bismarck and didn’t think anymore of the whole situation.
Later in the day, we were on our way home when we stopped at the post office in
our town to ask what had happened earlier on. My dad got out of the car as we came to a
stop and he talked to one of his friends that had gone out on the fire trucks. They talked
for a long time and by the look on his face I could tell that something serious had
happened. When he finally came back to the car, I was feeling really sick. I asked him
what happened and he looked into my eyes and told me that there had been a tragic
accident this morning. I asked him who had gotten hurt and he told me one of my
classmates had died. The first thing that came to my mind was, ”Oh my god, my best
friend is dead!” But my dad reassured me that it wasn’t her, but someone else that was
close to me.
He told me that Andrew had decided to help his dad on the farm and so he needed
to drive the pickup to the field for his dad. Well it all was going good and his dad was
following him with the tractor. They had been driving for a few miles and Andrew was
speeding up. Then Andrew went over a hill and his dad didn’t see any more dust ahead.
By the time he got over the hill all he saw was a rolled pickup in the ditch. He ran as fast
as he could and he found Andrew’s body on the road all bloody because he had been
thrown out of the vehicle. He died instantly from head trauma.
After my dad told me this I was in total shock. I called him a liar and I said that I
didn’t think that he was being very funny. All I could do was sit on the couch, and I
couldn’t talk to anyone or eat anything for days. All I could think about was how mean I
was to him and how I never even gave him a chance at anything. I then felt incredibly
guilty for all the things I had done to him and all the bad things that I had said to him.
It was Wednesday morning. It was time to go to the funeral. I walked into the
school, where the funeral was to be held, and right by the door where you walked into the
gym, was the casket. I didn’t think that I would have the courage to see him but my mom
encouraged me that I would regret not seeing him for the rest of my life. So I took her
advice and I walked up to the casket and looked at him. I started to cry as I looked at his
pitiful scared face. He was wearing a light blue shirt with a tie that had cartoons on it. He
was holding a flower and a little box with designs on the top. I then took the ring that he
had given to me as an engagement ring and I laid it on his body. That was the hardest
thing that I have ever done. I didn’t think that I would make it through the rest of the
ceremony but somehow I managed. After the funeral was done we went out to the
gravesite to bury him. His sisters handed me a rose to lay on top of the casket because
they knew how important I was to Andrew. So when I set the flower down I started to cry
and I wished at that moment that I could take back everything that I ever did to him. To
watch his parents and his sisters cry was so hard for me and I felt guilty that I was alive
and that this boy would never be able to experience anything that I would. All I could
think about was that this boy would never see day or night anymore and his parents will
never be able to look or touch him again.
That whole experience changed my life. My outlook on life as a whole, changed. I
grew up very quickly and I think that I am a lot smarter about many things, such as
driving. I also learned to realize that life is a precious thing and in one split second it
could all end. I still think about him when I am alone or whenever I see his family. I
thank god everyday that I got to talk with him before he was gone and I savor everyday
that I spend with my friends or my family. I will never forget him and he will always be
in my heart.