Snippets

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"I will be able to paint the world with the small motions of my little hands."

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"Laughter is a language of happiness which comes in a myriad of dialects."

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"There are many bullies who will cut the talking and start the beating."

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"When I think of these knock-offs [golf clubs], I think of...marines hauling a keg around the golf course and getting really drunk, throwing their clubs, and swearing a lot."

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"When I think about Paris, I think about seeing it rolled out naked in front of me, and the whole world spinning around it."

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"Field games in long grass..."

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"The weather turns brisk, whispering secrets of the coming winter leaving signs everywhere."

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"Hours of hide-and-go-seek played out in my grandparent's Connecticut house have ingrained in me a love for these smells [mothballs and dust]. I've crouched for hours in a state of anticipation and quiet contemplation behind walls of old, floor-length, leather jackets and thick, bristly woolen coats in the downstairs hallway closet, inhaling the sweet, archaic smell of the rough wool and the slick leather which encased and slid against my ruddy, plump cheeks. I was in my own...warm, silent world back then; a place where I was protected, safe, and surrounded by memories of the past which were not mine. Yet, I knew that I was not alone, and that someone in the real world wanted to find me and drag me back, laughing, to reality. The smell was a guardian against discovery, yet [it] held the promise that others hadn't forgotten me and wanted me to rejoin them, no matter...their motives."

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"Whenever I drop the steak on the hot grill, I'm greeted by the same sizzle every time. It's an angry hiss that dies out slowly in a dramatic display of succulent glory. I just stand and watch as the final statements are made."

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"Without wisdom to comfort me, I felt like a naked baby receiving its first bath...I was the boy without mittens in a snowball fight."

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"I believe that my blanket is much more than just fabric. It holds deep within its fibers tears of joy and sorrow, sleepless and restful nights, and prayers and wishes. It has comforted me since the prime days of my infancy, through nightmares, arguments, illness, grief, victories, and now[,] at the start of my independence."

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My best friend Tyler and I used to spend hours during the summer trying to fly. I even think that I succeeded a few times. It was up in Eden, Vermont, where my family has a cottage on the lake[,] that we made most of our attempts to fly. While the adults were in the house or on the porch, while the brothers were off making forts in the woods and doing things that they weren't supposed to be doing, and while the dogs were chasing squirrels, Tyler and I were running off the end of the dock into the lake in hopes that gravity would stop working and we would be airborne.

No one ever questioned what Tyler and I were doing, they probably thought that we were just swimming and diving off the dock. I remember rearing up at the foot of the dock and taking off at a full sprint to the end and soaring through the air into the water. Quickly[,] I would swim to shore and try again. Tyler would do the same thing. Every now and then one of us would pop up from under the surface of the water and scream to the other that it worked that time. It was magical. It was two children going against what society believed and trying to achieve the unachievable. When children let their imaginations run wild[,] there is no stopping them. When they get the idea in their heads of something that they are capable of, it seems like they will go after that idea no matter how ridiculous it seems.