Moving

When I was about eight years old, my family decided that we needed a bigger house than the one we lived in. We had a three bedroom house, and with a family of five, it seemed a little bit cramped. My two sisters, one starting elementary, and the other starting junior high, shared a room while I, a third grader, had my own room. The rooms weren’t that big, and with two girls sharing a room, there were a lot of fights. After years of listening to the screaming and yelling, my parents had had enough of it. They decided to build a house. 

My parents loved Centerville, and having lived there for more than 10 years, they didn’t want to leave. They found a new development with open lots, and it was in Centerville! It was the perfect place to move. After almost a year of waiting for the construction workers to complete our house, it was finally finished! 

We wanted to move in as soon as possible, but there were some complications. For starters, our house wasn’t finished in time for us to move in. We had already sold our house, and they wanted us out by December. By the time the deadline for us to move out came around, our house still had a couple of days before it was perfectly ready. Our furniture was not all moved into our house yet. For some reason, our bed frames were put in our rooms, but not our mattresses, so we decided to spend the night in a motel. We woke up the next morning, and went to school. I couldn’t focus all day because i wanted to go see my new house. As soon as the final bell rang, I ran as fast as I could, all the way to my new house. I was amazed at how awesome it was! It felt awesome to be able to run and run and run and not stop! I ran to every corner of my house, just to see all of it as fast as I could.

Justin’s Tree House

                During my early childhood, my neighbor was also my best friend. Even though I moved to a different neighborhood during third grade, we still managed to stay friends. He lived down the street from my first house, next to a pasture. I would ride there on a bike or a scooter almost every day. Even when I moved, I would still go visit him. We went to his house so much because of one thing. His tree house.

                We would spend all day in his tree house. We once built a table out of some plywood we had picked out of a dumpster. His older brother, Brandon, being only a couple years older than us, hung out with us a lot. He was a key part in convincing their mom to take us to the store to buy candy and drinks.

                One Friday night, we decided to have a sleepover. We thought that the best place would be Justin’s tree house. Brandon brought one of his friends too. We all built a fire in their fire pit, and started to roast marshmallows. After a while, that started to lose its appeal. We decided to raid the neighbor’s garden and see what we could find. We had all seen the cartoons of the sun becoming so hot that the corn started to turn into popcorn in the middle of the farmer’s field, so we decided to try and make that happen. We broke a couple of pieces of corn from the stalk, and brought them back to the tree house. We then shucked the corn, while trying to talk like hillbillies. Once they were free from their husks, we brought the corn back to the fire and tried roasting them with the marshmallow sticks. After our corn had caught on fire instead of turning into popcorn, we abandoned our efforts.

 Brandon’s friend, Tanner, saved the day as he pulled out a can of bug spray. He sprayed a large amount onto his pants, and then put a match to them. As we laughed, he ran around the backyard, leaving a trail of fire behind him. We then took hand sanitizer from the bathroom in the house, squirted it into our hands, lit it on fire, then played pass with the burning slime. When the sanitizer bottle was empty, we tried to think of new games that involved fire. We all turned towards the slide. Nothing will ever look more beautiful than the moonlight glinting off the polished surface of the slide. As Tanner climbed into the tree house, he told us to spray the slide, count to three, and then light it. He screamed all the way down. When he reached the bottom, the fire had gone out and we were immediately by his side, congratulating his bravery. We all took turns sliding down the Hell Slide, as we called it, until the can of bug spray ran out. We then mad our way back into the tree house, and fell asleep.

The Cabin

When  was a kid, I never did what my parents told me to do. If they told me not to do something, what would I do? I would do the exact opposite. I also had a knack for convincing people to let me do things, and to do things for me.

One memory from my childhood is the time I crashed my four wheeler. It happened at my cabin when I was seven, so about nine years ago. My family bought a cabin the day my little sister was born. My dad and his two brothers thought it would be nice to have a family cabin, so they all pitched in for a cabin by Strawberry Reservoir. They signed the papers the very day my sister was born.

My family has always loved the outdoors, so it was no surprise that we owned four wheelers. We still have the four wheeler that I crashed, and it works fine, despite the dents in the racks. At the time, we had two green Yamaha 400’s.

My dad had invited his friend and his family up to stay the weekend at our cabin. My dad’s friend loved horses, and even brought up a few of his own. He took his two oldest sons and my dad horseback riding on a trail a mile or two from the highway, leaving his wife, my mom, my sisters and his youngest son behind with me.

While my sisters were keeping our moms occupied, my friend Trent and I decided to go four wheeling. He had never ridden a four wheeler before, and I had never driven one without my dad sitting behind me, ready to take control. Like all young boys, we thought it would be fun to race. We would race on the trails around my cabin, and on the dirt road. The trails were bumpy, so we couldn’t go that fast and quickly gave up, switching our racetrack for the smoother dirt road.

Trent drew a line through the dirt. He said that this would be our starting line. Because he was older than me by a few years, I had to listen to him. We decided that the firehouse by the gate would be our finish line, and the winner would get to pretend to drive the old fire truck. This was a great prize, because that was one of our favorite things to do. A couple years back we had found where they keep the helmets and jackets. Being so small, we couldn’t wear the heavy jackets, but we could get the helmets to stay on.

As soon as Trent said “GO!” we hit the gas and went as fast as we could. Trent was older and braver, so he was going faster. As we approached the curve, he slowed down, but I sped up. My front tire hit his back tire, and I was flipped into the air. Luckily I was wearing my helmet, but that didn’t help my body when I hit the ground. For about three seconds I didn’t move, and then the four wheeler landed a couple inches from my face. I screamed and shot back into the bushes and just lay there, not moving, not saying anything, even though Trent was calling my name, trying to see if I was okay.

He eventually found me, and helped me onto the back of his four wheeler. When we got back to the cabin, our moms yelled at us until they saw how hurt I was, and that we had only brought back one four wheeler. They then carried us into the house, and we sat on the couch, telling them the story of how I crashed. Trent did most of the talking because I couldn’t get my thoughts together. When my dad got home, he went back and rolled the four wheeler back on its wheels, and drove it to the cabin as his friend brought the horses behind. Needless to say, I was grounded from driving the four wheelers for quite some time after that.            

       

Grand Targhee

                For as long as I can remember, my family has always had a particularly unusual tradition. But before I tell you what it is, you need a backstory. When I was about six years old, my dad decided to teach me how to ski. We bought tickets to different local ski resorts throughout the years. I learned the same way that my two sisters had learned, and how my brother will learn. We would wake up early, and take a morning lesson from the ski instructors, then at lunch my dad would take over. This was kind of hard because I always seemed to do worse when my dad was around, but I still became a pretty good skier.

                My brother and sisters are not the only ones in my family who know how to ski. My parents, and all of my mom’s side, know how to ski, excluding the toddlers. Most know how to snowboard, too. Now my uncle is kind of a fanatic. Even to this day he has multiple passes to multiple ski resorts. He does however, travel to resorts outside of Utah. Quite a few years ago, he found a place called Targhee. It’s really called Grand Targhee Resort, and is located on Grand Teton National Forest, but we just call it Targhee. He slowly started inviting my family to ski with him, once a year. Now it has become a family tradition. You can find the Farbers, Easts, Woods, Knowltons, and Beyers up on the backside of Grand Teton every February.

                Targhee will always be special to me for one reason. No matter what happens, there is always something good to come out of it. One year we found a lodge nearby with a lobby and a fireplace where we could all hang out after skiing. Other years we had found a sleigh ride to a yurt, which is kind of like a shack, where we could have dinner, and a new ski lift. But two years will always stand out to me in particular. My favorite memories of Targhee are when I learned how to snowboard, and when I found a friendship.

                Although I was 12 and had already learned how to ski, I picked up snowboarding very quickly. Unlike skiing, my dad couldn’t teach me how to snowboard. Like I have mentioned earlier, I always seemed to do worse when he was around. I would spend most of my day in a lesson, and then I would go find my older cousins to snowboard with. They really helped me to become a better boarder. We would go off of jumps, ride through the trees, and race down the mountain. I always had a great time.

                Last year at Targhee, when I was 15, my cousin Hannah and I went to the pool to pass the time before dinner. When we got there, there were two other people sitting in the hot tub. We decided that we would swim for a couple minutes, and then go say hi. As we got out of the pool and started walking closer, we realized that they looked very similar, and I thought that they must be related. We all introduced ourselves, said our name and where we were from. I can’t remember one girl’s name, but the other was Alta Farrell. They were both from Maine, skied, and they had a family tradition to come to Targhee like us. As we started talking, we decided to meet up the next morning to go skiing together. They took us places that we had never been before, and we returned the favor. This went on for a day or so, and then we decided to exchange numbers. We found one another on Facebook, and maintain our friendship even today. This will always be one of my favorite memories of Grand Targhee Resort.

The Farm

                When I was younger, about six or seven, I lived in Centerville. I lived close to Reading Elementary. A few of my neighbors had farms by Reading Elementary. They were both really good family friends. They both had horses, because they had grown up with them.

                One night for family night, my neighbor Larry Farris invited us over to ride his horses. I had always wanted to ride horses, but had never gotten the opportunity. At about 4:00 in the afternoon, my family and I headed over to Larry’s barn. We had all been there before, collecting eggs from his chickens. When we got there, he was waiting for us with a few of his horses already saddled. As I climbed onto the horse, he gave me some advice. I had seen movies where cowboys kick their horses’ sides to make them go faster, so I decided to try it. As soon as my heels connected to the horse’s side, he broke into a full sprint. Being only seven, and not expecting it at all, I fell off of my horse and landed in some manure

Scout Camp

                When I was 12 I became a scout. My dad wanted me to become an Eagle Scout, but that was a little too advanced of a goal for a kid who had barely been camping. We would go camping once a month, usually at Bountiful Peak, or up Farmington Canyon. We would meet Friday after school and start to get the camping supplies packed. We needed to pack propane, tents, water, food, and our personal things like clothes and sleeping bags. We would drive to our desired camping spot, pitch a tent, then light fires to keep us busy until nighttime, when the fun happened. We would play games like cops and robbers and jailbreak by the lantern. Saturday morning we would pack up and head for home.

                Once a year we would take it a step further. We would go to summer camp. One particular year we went to Camp Aspen Ridge in Idaho. Their specialty was horses. We all got the horsemanship merit badge, and did the polar bear challenge.           Although scout camp sucks, there are some fun parts. This year, for example, we got to ride horses every day, and I got to canoe and swim in the lake.

 All scouts know how to light fires. When you’re 12 years old, there is no greater rush than controlling nature. We would make fires with different arrangements of sticks, and then we learned how to be creative when we discovered lighters. We would go to the dollar store, and get the cheap, disposable lighters. They were the best for our way of using them. We would also stop by the supermarket and pick up some bug spray or sunscreen. Now our lighters were special. We had learned how to fix the lighter so the flame went two or three times as high as it should have. It wasn’t hard, and you could do it with nothing more than two fingers so all of our lighters were fixed. We would light sunscreen and bug spray on fire all the time. When we would walk around at night, we wouldn’t use flashlights, we would use torches.

At Camp Aspen Ridge, there was a field with a tree right in the middle. This was a great source of our excitement. One night after dark, about 11 o’clock by the count of a smuggled iPod, four of us set out for the field. When we were about halfway to our destination, we heard our names being called. Our scoutmaster, who none of us liked, had decided to check on us, and had discovered our absence. He gathered the only two scouts that we hadn’t taken with us, his goody-two-shoes son, and the crybaby. Unbeknownst to them, we had decided to play cops and robbers. We were the robbers and they were the cops. We had the advantage by far. We were bigger, stronger, and knew the field well. When the cops would tackle one of us, another robber would jump out of the tall weeds and save his friend.  It was all fun and games, for the robbers, until one of the kids pulled a knife on me. Needless to say, we all disappeared into the weeds, hiding from the cops. We didn’t dare breathe; we didn’t want to risk being found by the psycho with a knife. We all knew he had anger issues, he had gotten into a fistfight with another scout during the flag ceremony, and I had had to pull him off of my friend. He was still pissed at me. The robbers slowly snuck out of the field, and back to our campsite. The cops spent the next half-hour looking for us, until they realized that we had fooled them. The rest of the night was not spent sleeping; it was spent running around Camp Aspen, hiding from the rest of our troop, until we fell asleep behind some bushes.

Impact Moment

 

                All my life I have loved to watch movies. I have seen all types of movies with all types of actors. I even went to the theater twice in one day just to see The Dark Knight Rises again.

                Through watching hundreds of movies, one stands out to me in particular. This movie was originally a book, but then it was scripted into a movie. The Count of Monte Cristo.

                The Count of Monte Cristo is, essentially, about revenge. Now, this wasn’t just some minor transgression, the main character, Edmond Dantes, is blamed for the escape of Napolean Bonaparte. Edmond is betrayed by his very powerful, very jealous, “best friend.” After Edmond escapes the harshest prison in Europe, he plans revenge on the three people responsible for his suffering for the last 15 years.

                Edmond doesn’t just plan to kill them, he plans to ironically punish them. He discovers a vast amount of pirate treasure, and uses that to his advantage. He makes himself the Count of Monte Cristo.

                I view this movie differently than most people. They just see it as a story mainly about revenge, but I think of it as a story about a man so cunning, humble and intelligent that he outsmarts everyone around him. I try to be that man. I try to be the smartest person out there, but not let my emotions get the better of me.