Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Narritive Essay Draft.

                                         Little Chute Wi. s                 

 

         It was seven years since I saw my half sister Amanda. One day, I got in touch with her over the phone and we were reunited. She told me she lived in Little Chute WI. And that she had two kids and a husband now. She said that she really wanted to see me and meet my girlfriend Leah Ann, and just hangout again like we used to. I agreed. But it seemed really far away, and we were both so busy. so we never made the plans. It wasn't until after my girlfriend made arrangements for us to go see a  concert in Milwaukee, that I realized how close we would be to Little Chute! I called my sister and we marked it on the calender. 
             I remember being out to see Bush, Chevelle, and Filter play at the Rave. I consider it to be my first "real" concert. It was truly an awesome experience!  We stayed at a hotel in Milwaukee after the concert and the next morning left for Little Chute. I was so distracted by the good time that I was having, and the sites to see on the drive, that I forgot to even think about what I might talk about with my sister or her husband who I had never met.           
             Finally, we arrive... I called my sister and told her that we where in Little Chute and needed final directions on how to find her house. She told us how to get there and we pulled up in a matter of minutes. Amanda greeted us out in her front yard. I was so nervous and excited! We greeted, laughed at nothing for a second, and she took us around to the garage to meet Jake. 
                 We ducked our heads to walk under an old white, dented up half opened garage door, and peered into the dimly lit mess of bad ass car parts surrounding a bad ass car. Under the hood of the car stood one of the biggest, meanest looking guys I had ever seen.   "Jake this is my brother Ben and his girlfriend Leah Ann."  Jake didn't even look up.  "Hey...."  I felt awkward and anxious. I needed to hear words, so I just started in, "Hey man this is a real nice car! Look at all this stuff! Dude your a big guy! I bet you could be a bouncer or sumthin!?" He looked up for a second and chuckled a little, " Yeah...."  Then Amanda Chirped up, "" Hey are we still having Kal and the others over tonight?"  He said yes and we went inside.
          We caught up a bit and went into the living room so Jake could put on some music and show us his pistols and MMA pictures. Then Amanda and Jake had their friends come over. We all decided to get some beer and go out in the back yard to gather around a fire pit and socialize. It was at least an hour of them talking to each other and catching up with each other. They were big strong people with strong attitude and strong interest  in cars, drinking, and fighting. I was running out of material to talk about and things started to get awkward again. Small talk was going nowhere, and Being that My girlfriend and I were the only new thing for them, attention became  directed at us. ..I'm not real into cars, I don't like fighting, and I am not a big drinker with a bunch of relevant inside jokes and bar stories. So conversation began to grind to a halt. Then Amanda came back outside with more people and more beer. She must have picked up on the thick air of awkward silence surrounding that fire and made an attempt at breaking it.  " Ben, do you still play guitar? Because Jake has this old acoustic upstairs!" "Jake can he play it?" Jake looks me and says "Yeah if he can, that thing is from the 60's and hasn't had the strings changed in at least 15 years!." They all looked at me, and after a lot of laughing and hesitation on my part, She went in to get it.
           It was unreal. The amount of age that this thing had was incredible. It had no distinguishing marks or indications as to what kind of acoustic it was. The strings where rusted and dusty. As I tuned them into an understandably low drop E tuning, I held my head back as far as it would go, half expecting the strings to snap back lacerating my jugular and causing me to bleed out! Finally, the high E  Done. I made a bar chord and strummed the guitar. I looked at Leah Ann, She nodded in approval and made a big smile. I looked around the fire at the growing group of people, all staring and waiting.... " So what do you guys wanna hear?" 

14 comments:

  1. I really like how you ended the story. It makes me wish there was another page to see what happened afterward. Great job!

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  2. I like your story and found it very entertaining but the font you chose and the size of the lettering made this essay visually painful to read and therefore distracted my attention from the actual story. I even considered copying it into another source to ease the read. You might want to contemplate changing that. Otherwise Great Job.

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    1. I think I fixed it. Thanx for the heads up! :)

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    2. Towards the end you capitalized "and Being that My girlfriend" I believe Being and My should be lowercase. Other than that I enjoyed reading your story the second time as well. Well written.

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  3. I felt that what you were trying to say with your essay that music can connect all kinds of people. I think when your sister asked about the guitar, thats when I thought you were truly connecting with her. I love the last paragraph the most. When you were talking about tuning the guitar, it really made me visualize what you were doing. I only saw a few typos. There was one on the second line, where you capitalized the word "and", also in the sixth paragraph you have a period before the sentance "I am not real into cars.

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  4. I like how you wrote the part about when you first entered the garage and the akward monents throughout the night, it actually made me feel a little akward at times. I could really feel how you felt. I also liked the description of the guitar, especially the part about the strings lacerating your jugular, it showed how old it must have been. I think you did a great job.

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  5. I think this was a great story and it turned from akward silence to actualkly getting to know each other. i did notice a typo in second to last paragraph, where you say i'm not real into cars. the description of the guitar was very vivid and i think i liked that part the best. nice job and thank you for sharing with me.

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  6. It took awhile to get where you were going. I was not sure what the narative was about. It started off with you and your sister than a trip and finaly ended with the guitar. I felt like you should have tied the guitar in a little sooner. You used some great description. Maybe some more background into your playing or love of the guitar. I really had no idea how you felt about playing or if you had ever played before. Maybe tell about what happened when you started to play. Nice job

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    1. Oh, Cool. Yeah thanks for the comment. Guess I was trying not to give up too much on my first essay. Being that I will be writing about this all semester.

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  7. Cool topic. It was kind of hard for me to pick out your thesis so maybe revise and make it more clearer. I would recommand putting your thesis either in your first or second paragraph. I like to know a little bit more details relating to your topic (Guitars) of course. There were some sentence that were kind of short, maybe support it with more details. I hope this helps.

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  8. This was a very happy essay. I could tell the joy that filled you when you finally could show them what your about. To be honest it is very cool that you play guitar im a huge country music fan, and acoustic guitars are a big part of it. i tried to learn once but it was never my thing. i give you props for willing yourself to learn!

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  9. "We laughed at nothing for a second" this whole section on your first reunion at Amanda's house is well done. Actual, the real power of your narrative is in your adept description. Bad ass car parts, bad ass car, meanest guy you've ever seen, "I needed to hear words." Perfect. Typos are an issue here as well as some incomplete sentences. They can distract from your descriptions. All the lead-in with awkward silences, the gathering of tough people around a fire really helped the reader root for you to play this old guitar well. A good edit will help this quite a bit. I wouldn't mind a quick phrase that explains "understandably low E."

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