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The Queen of Broken Arms

By Whitney Hill, age 10

 

     The orange nail polish brush slid over my fingernail.

     “The hairstyle is really cool,” I said to one of the nurses. I was getting a makeover. Funny how you can be in one place and feel like you’re in another. That’s how I felt when I was walking through the doors of the nurse’s lounge – not scared feeling for the X-rays to come, but rather, excitement. I felt like a princess getting ready to become a queen.

 

     Just hours earlier, I felt like the Queen’s jester, instead of the Queen.

     VRRRRROOOOOM, sounded the vacuum, tired of being used by my mother.

    My older brother, Sean, and I were playing a game.

    “No!” I yelled in my baby voice (I was really five).

    “Blah!” Sean yelled in his baby voice ( He was really eight).

     “I’m tired of playing this game,” I said.

      “Do you want to do something cool?” Sean asked.

     “Yes!” I yelled.

       “Ok. You sit on the edge of the bed and let go with your hands, but not your feet,” he said in a daring voice.

       Me, the peasant, and Sean, the king, as usual. I was being pushed one more step toward the dungeon.

        “’kay!” I said, and climbed up.

         “Let go,” he said.

         I let go and didn’t fall. “Yay!”

         King Sean said, “OK, you got that one. Now do the same thing but let go with your hands AND feet.”

       “Sean!” My mother called.

        “Coming!” King Sean yelled and ran out of the room.

         I let go with hands and feet and fell to the tile floor. “OOWWW,OW, OOWWW.”

         My mother came running into the room.

 

 

 

       So, that’s how I got to this hospital-salon. And as I walked out of the doors of the nurse’s lounge, I thought, I may be the Queen of Broken Arms, but now I know, I’ve been a queen all along!

 

  Brandon, My Hero

by Mia, age 11

 

 

     My brother named Brandon is 29 and has a family. Ever since I was little her always gave me his full attention. We would go down to the beach, swim, and play in the sand and surf. I loved splashing water into his glistening, brown eyes. But now that he has a family, he is often occupied with his baby.

 

     When I was about 9 years old Brandon got married to a woman named Lisseth. At their wedding, lisseth was pregnant with Ayla who is now 3 years old. I remember how beautiful Lisseth was and how excited I was to have a new baby in the family.

 

     After the baby was born, every time I went to Brandon's house, instead of his usual  greeting of "hey, what's up?" I heard the shriek and cry of the baby. They would go running. I thought he didn't have the time for me, it felt like he wasn't there for me.

 

     As Brandon got older, he got more occupied with work and the family and I started missing him more and more. Yes, I miss him alot but he does make sure we have lunch together at least once every time I visit him in Costa Rica.

 

     I thank him every day for all of the help, love, and support he has given me. I could have done anything without Brandon, my hero.

   

Two Huge Dogs

by Jose, age 12

 

 

      One night, when my dad was 15 and living in Mexico City, he was with some friends around midnight. They were only 5 blocks from where my dad lived with my grandma, grandpa and my uncles in a big house. He was with six of his friends, some of whom would marry my mother’s sisters and become my uncles. They were outside a soccer field sitting at the bottom of a tree and sharing a huge bottle of beer. They were having fun, saying jokes, singing songs and talking about girls and their future. Just like always, they started telling scary stories.

 

     I imagine his friends might have told the stories about la llorona to creep my father out because he had the farthest to walk home. My dad was never scared but he was paying so close attention to the scary stories that he didn’t know what time it was. Finally, he realized it was 2:00 am and he got up and told his friends he was going home.

 

    As he walked along in the middle of the street, he whistled and wasn’t worried about anything. Suddenly, he saw two huge dogs with red eyes. They were just bulldogs but they were black, completely black, and big, about 3 feet tall. He looked to the right and saw two bricks under a streetlight. He slowly leaned over and picked them up. The dogs were staring at him. My dad saw that if he went to the right, there was a dog. If he went to the left, there was a dog. He decided to go right in-between them. As he walked between them I imagine he was probably shaking a bit even though he had a brick in either hand. He stared ahead and as he passed he could hear the dogs growling softly.

 

    When he got to the other side of the dogs, he dropped the bricks and started running for home. He knew the dogs were a message because, in Mexico, when you see a dog as big as that, they say that there’s a message you need to think about. So my dad thought about how he had been drinking a lot and didn’t help my grandmother with her taco stand as much as he could. He was a good guy, and generous to his friends and family, but he thought about how he sometimes stole beer from the taco cart and hung out a lot with his friends. He decided that it was a message that he should stop drinking. The dogs were warning him that he needed to change.

 

  My dad told me this story when I was eleven so I wouldn’t make the same mistakes he did. So, today I help my mom and try to learn a lot of new stuff. I listened to my father’s story and it made such a huge impression on me. I want to finish college and I don’t want to meet any dogs on my way there.