Summer Reading Assignment #2

Melissa Johnson
AP Language and Composition
Summer Reading Assignment-Essay 2
July 15th, 2010

Going Through Changes


I have lived my whole life in Waltham, Massachusetts. The first 14 years of my life were spent in the same house, on the northern side of Waltham. My neighborhood was commonly known as “Lakeview”, because it was set around Hardy Pond. I grew up listening to stories from my mother and father, who were also raised in this neighborhood. These stories consisted of going swimming in the pond, watching baseball games at the park down the street, and playing kickball or street hockey with their friends for hours at a time. Both of my parents are one of four children, and were raised very similarly to how my siblings and me have been brought up. My father could go on for hours, usually blabbing about the good times he had at his father’s camp in Vermont growing up. Most of the stories sound something like; “Oh, and I’ll never forget that time me and my brother took dad’s speedboat out and forced our sisters to stop being babies and try water skiing. Watching them wipe out over and over again was definitely worth the deep shit we were in only when dad looked out his window and saw us half way across the lake!” And of course, there’s the infamous 21st birthday party that my father and his buddies threw at the camp. My sisters and I are pretty sure that every time this story is told it starts off differently, but it always seems to end with one-armed Larry being thrown in the lake in his sleeping bag. The end of the story, of course, always told at a volume at least four notches higher than the rest of the story. The stories of his teen years in Waltham tend to be a bit different, consisting more of crashing his Harley and the numerous nights spend with his best friend Billy that ended in my Grandfather receiving calls from the Waltham Police Department. All of my siblings and I tend to have the same reactions when hearing these stories, almost always being one of these two: “how did mom end up marrying you?” and “if we did half these things, you guys would kill us!”. My mother’s stories tend to be a bit less crazy, but we all know that one day she will decide to tell us what really went on when she was younger rather than the stories of “making quilts with my great grandmother” and “going to the drive-in every Friday night with the family”. As for now, the fondest memories I have with my sisters consist of spending every summer day growing up together. We always somehow found something to do, whether it was making up our own games on the trampoline, making bead animals and selling them at our “bead animal stands”, or playing outside with the neighborhood kids until we would refuse to come in for dinner. The biggest threat known to man back then was, and would always be: “I’m pretty sure the ice cream mans supposed to come around tonight, but if you don’t come in and eat dinner you’re not getting anything from him either!”. My mother got us around the table in a matter of 10 seconds each time we heard those words being yelled from the porch. Although we all feel like we got a lot from growing up in Lakeview, hearing their stories make it clear that we had never seen the kind of simple fun that they were able to experience, basically due to the difference in the time periods that we were forced to grow up in. Hardy Pond is now too contaminated for almost anything to live in, meaning to swim in it is now illegal. The complex that used to be a roller skating rink, arcade, and five-cent bowling alley has now been turned into yet another CVS and Staples complex, with a parking lot way bigger than that which is necessary even during school supply shopping week. I may only be 15, going on 16 on July 24th, but it is clear to me that times have changed immensely over the past 40 or so years. To be honest, I think they have changed for the worst. It is scary to imagine how my children will have grow up 20 years from now, but it is even scarier to think that there is nothing we can do about it. The summer days that I remember waking up early to go outside and run around with my sisters, play soccer, and meet up with friends are now spent very differently by my 12 year old brother. He usually sleeps until 12:30-1:00 every day, and wakes up only to plop himself in front of the TV, turn his Xbox on, and spend the day there. The time that I would be spending outside using my imagination are now spent in front of the TV, trying to kill as many people possible and trash talking to “friends” through microphones and headsets. Some days I feel as though the only conversations between my brother and I are him asking where my iPod is, or for me to make him something to eat. When my parents grew up, it wasn’t very common for kids to move out and go to college then be on their own, it was more likely that they stay home for a while. This isn’t the case now, which is why it has been difficult for my sisters to build a relationship with my younger brother. They have both been out of the house since the ages of 17 or 18, and without the use of texting or websites such as Facebook, I would probably only speak to them about once a month. This is how things have been for my brother since he was 9, which is sad. I hate the thought that with each generation, the stories we will be passing down to our children get more and more boring, but it seems as though that is the reality of today. Now that I am almost 16, my parents have gotten divorced, my sisters have moved out, and we have moved to the opposite side of town. Where we now live, it is very rare to see children outside playing, my mother is more comfortable with keeping us in the house as much as possible, acting like there will be drug dealers at every corner we turn, and my brother and I only see our father a couple times a month. It may sound like all I’m doing is complaining, but I feel as though my generation is forced to sit back and relax while the world just continues to complicate itself. I really just hope that I’m able to put myself on the path of making changes for the better, and building my own stories to pass down and be remembered by. At the same time I just want to help my brother out, pull him to the side and make sure he realizes the importance of making the most out of life despite the circumstances today’s world may tangle him up in.