The night I was born it was snowing miraculously in the cool, calm streets of Columbia. I was quiet when I first came out, easy to say that I’m much different today. There was some altercation about my name but eventually they settled for a name I feel fits even if it has no specific meaning. My name is Ben and my life has been a wonderful wild twist of events that I have enjoyed up to today. My life started as any babies would however my mother told me that as a baby I was very smart and very curious. I think it’s clear to say that might have gotten me into some trouble. My mother and father have the same common beliefs but two huge differences when it comes to injuries. My mother thinks that anything with blood is bad and my dad thinks that everything internal is bad. Granted that might be because of all of his internal problems that restrict him from working too hard at fun recreational activities. My curiosity got the better of me at age 2 and as I was toddling around I frightened my father who tripped and spilled an extremely new hot cup of coffee on my shoulder. When you think about it it’s a minor problem but has kept this shoulder sunburnt even now. Then I joined a preschool called green door, ironic because the door was blue and not green I was greeted with friendliness probably because my parents had paid for it. I quickly made some new friends and played and we played many games. One day we were playing tag which turned out not to be such a great idea, one of my friends Noah was to me at least; a giant. He was about 6 inches taller than me it doesn’t seem like much but at the age of three it’s a whopping amount.

We were playing and I was running through the playground, hopping through dirty, black tires and climbing over six foot tall cracked, sharp rocks, however it was not while trying these dangerous feats that I was injured it was when while running on small pebbles Noah barreled into me leveling and successfully crushing me into the small razor-edges rocks.

He was quick to ask “Are you okay Ben?”

Noah was a kind boy with a gentle heart and I still don’t blame him for that but I responded. “Dude look what you did to me!” I was bleeding from two or three different places and was quite frustrated with my pain.

“I’m sorry,” he quickly uttered sadly. Since I knew he meant no harm so I forgave him.

My mom did not forgive me though and on our way to the emergency room to get stitches she scolded me for being so ruthless and inattentive.

I did not appreciate my mom telling me what I could or could not do so I angrily yelled back “Stop treating me like a child”. I was however a child and now am happy that she did so much to ensure my safety.

Later that year still at the age of three I started learning math. I speedily became acquainted with the dull, bleak problems of multiplication, addition, and subtraction.

Green Door began to bore me after that so there really wasn’t much I could do until I got to Elementary School.

I passed many of my day’s playing cards with my friends bragging about being better than them at whatever thing we were arguing about even though I only won about ½ of the time.

“You can’t beat me your terrible at this,” I would exclaim.

“Why do I beat you half of the time,” they would retort.

“You don’t your just stupid,” I yelled and that was one of the worst words for you could say as a preschooler.

At this point a fight was about to break out and some of the students who working there had to come break us apart for fear that our 4 year old hands would do some sort of damage.

Finally Elementary school arrived. A safe haven from the dreadful, boring, daily routine that had occupied my life for the previous 3 years. Kindergarten was a bore, it was too easy and at naptime I could never sleep. That poster that they put up that says “Everything you need to know you learn in Kindergarten” is a complete lie. I always hoped it would be true so I could quit school early but sadly I have to learn more for a good successful even unsuccessful job.

However Kindergarten was bearable because of my wonderful joyous and somewhat elderly teacher Mrs. Schoonover handed out candy and other fun prizes. We did some boring activities though consisting of crafts which always irritated me from the dirty sticky messes that stuck to my fingers afterwards. She did hand out candy though and one time I was daydreaming about being a policeman in car chase just because at the time I wanted to be a policeman when I quickly snapped back to reality only to find that Mrs. Schoonover was rewarding me for my “attentiveness.”

First grade was much more fun we got more freedom and in my opinion the people in my class were much livelier, and much more interesting. I got into a social group I guess you could call it with some of my closest friends at the time. The group consisted of Tate, Macauley, Jack and finally of course me.

We basically ostracized anybody who attempted to join us uninvited and eventually the other students learned to respect our ways without telling or (snitching) to a teacher. We had consistent bragging rights and competitions about the game of foursquare and formed a team to gang up on the new comers we consistently had two of us hold the 1 and 2 squares and demolished any new person who came in or the threatening person in the oh so daring 3 square.

“Today I’m gonna be in the 1 square ok,” Macauley would state.

“No I called dibs on it earlier man,” Jack would retort. It would always end in a rock paper scissors tournament in which Jack and I routinely won.

Our teacher constantly had us try to figure out how many days of school were left and I always knew and after she called on everybody else (who inevitably got it wrong) she called on me. The rest of the year passed in a blur as there were the regular problems and competitions of a 6 year old.

Finally I arrived to second grade which was a sudden change in pace and challenge. We had many hard projects that year including a medieval project which appealed to most of us but the costumes we made were very outlandish. I learned a lot that year and slowly my sagacity grew and expanded. The next big step in 2nd grade was the book we had to write. It only had to be 5 pages but at the time that was like a genuine novel. I wrote about a monkey who traveled around with his sidekick chimpanzee and they flew around in a rocket rescuing space cats. My goal was to have a longer book than my friend Frank.

“How long’s your book Frank?”

“Two pages it’s about a killer cheetah named Felipe,” Frank responded.

“Hah mine’s three but I like your theme,” I would say and that would be the end of the conversation until the next time we challenged each other. At the end of it all I got +’s for the book which was like an A at the time and my book was longer Frank's.

Second grade was probably my 3rd favorite grade in Elementary school. You had freedom there was easy work and you were older than about half the kids at the school. We did a lot of things in 2nd grade and not all of them were smart. For example my friends Colin and Tate bet on the answer to a laffy taffy question.

“The answer to this question is a vampire,” Tate remarked.

“No it’s not,” Colin laughed.

“Yes it is!” Tate shouted.

“It is not. I’ll bet you $200 if you’re right,” Colin daringly said.

They then flipped up the answer and sure enough it was a vampire.

The bet was $200 and Tate won and even today Colin’s in a little bit of debt to Tate. Although the way we get rid of it is just buy doing odd, hilarious or humiliating tasks.

I also have money owed to me by Colin because he made a bet to me that he could date the 7 girls he thought were pretty at one time. Unfortunately for him he got rejected by the first one.

Home life was easy too at the time because of no homework easy chores and lots of free time. All of my friends lived in my neighborhood so we played games quite often. Our dads had to keep an eye on us all the time though because we were quite mischievous. Once we were playing snow football and we tackled a kid into the snow and essentially succeeded in burying him in snow.

“Are you okay?” I would ask.
(Muffled scream of anger).
“Is that a no?” I would cautiously say.
(More angry sounds underneath the pile of snow).
“Okay guys we should try to get him out of there,” I would suggest.
“Okay, fine,” came the consent from the rest of the boys.

I think a big part of my life though was in 6th grade because it was a big transition from the elementary school which I was so accustomed to. It was a big transition but I feel like it had a great significance in preparing me for what I’m doing today. Also my sports life really helped and still helps me today. It keeps me in good shape and keeps my mind healthy. That helps me face whatever’s coming. The rest of middle school was fun but a blur as it sped by quickly.