The Personal Essay

I slept over at my friend's house two nights ago. My girlfriend, who goes to another school, was there too and she said that her assignment for the weekend was to write a personal essay.

"That sounds fun!" I said. "I want to write a personal essay!"

Basically, she wants me to transfer to her school. Her main argument is that there may be a lot of work, but it will be work I'll want to do. So far (as much as I hate to say it) her argument does have some substance.

Well, anyway. It took me three hours (factoring in the large amount of A Very Potter Musical that I was watching while doing the work) to do a short paragraph for my history class, and it took me fifteen minutes to write the personal essay. (Ouch, right?) Anyway, here it is. (I do realize that this is short too.)

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I must have been six, and it had snowed.

“It’s a snow day,” Aba said, “and the driveway needs shoveling.” We didn’t even have our snow blower or our digital camera yet – it was that long ago. So I, along with then three-year-old Itai, was recruited to help clear the driveway. Or perhaps we volunteered. We were young enough that we liked doing chores.

We bundled up in all our gear in the order that kindergarten teachers always say you should – snow pants, boots, coat, hat, gloves. Itai and I each got a small shovel and set out to help our parents. It’s possible that we were really being a nuisance rather than helping, but it was probably better than leaving us inside to our own devices.

It took a long time – of course it did, otherwise they wouldn’t have called a snow day. It was eerily silent, the kind of silence that you only have when it snows. The endless whiteness swallows up the sound.

I was shoveling by the big living room window when I stopped and looked around. My nose was cold and red and hurting a little and everyone was working around me.

“Am I doing well?” Itai asked in his high-pitched voice.

“You’re doing perfectly,” Mama said.

For a minute I almost felt like I wasn’t there, like I was looking through my eyes from somewhere far away. It was like this bundle of questions suddenly was delivered to my mind. Why are we here? How are we here?

It’s the first time I actually remember the questions. How did it happen? How did I come to be right here, right now? How am I alive?

After maybe a minute it occurred to me that I should probably keep on shoveling. I pushed the questions aside, stuck the shovel in the snow, and threw it to the side.

So far, it’s been eight years since then. I haven’t stopped asking.