I am taking a creative writing class From Universal Class. Its a really great place with many various classes offered. If you might be interested tale a look at Universal Class Online
Creative Writing 101 Lesson 4 Assignment B
My Stepfather was in the Army. Because of his career we moved from place to place frequently. I can remember many of the places we lived but not necessarily the dates we lived there.
I remember living in Hawaii. The smooth beaches with the really huge waves and seeing people body surfing in the clear water. I had a pet turtle that got out of his bowl and disappeared. The volcano exploded and there was a lot of rumbling and many people were afraid. One famous tourist attraction was the blow hole. It was formed in the lava at the edge of the ocean. The rocks had small tunnels that ran from the side to the top of the rock. Incoming waves would hit the rocks so hard that the impact would cause the water to erupt into the air as if a whale blowing water as it surfaced in the ocean. I the back yard of our house we had fruit trees and large flower bushes bigger then I was. I was only five years old.
I have many memories of living in Long Beach California. I went to a small school and didn't like to play baseball. I thought it was stupid to swing a stick at a ball and if you hit it you had to run around in a circle. The baseball coach of course didn't agree with my opinion, he did agree that we all had a right to one. He also thought since I didn't want to play ball I could run laps. I remember doing a lot of running that year. I also remember a large fire. These days it seems as if there is always a large fire somewhere but I was a child and had never lived in a place where the fire ringed the town and ash fell from the sky.
I also had my first encounter with a pervert. While walking home from the school bus stop a man riding by on a bicycle asked me to come over. In those days there were not any news reports or media coverage of kids being snatched off the streets to never be seen again. I kept walking and all he did was flash his naked penis at me. I was eleven years old.
One of my favorite places to live was Germany. The country seemed so clean and beautiful. I ate fresh cherries off the farmer's trees. I picked gooseberries off the trailing vines. I learned a few German words. It snowed and I learned to sky on a hill in the back yard. I still have a scar where I fell and stabbed myself in the leg with a sky pole. I was twelve.
We were living in North Dakota for my sixteenth birthday. There was a blizzard and we were snowbound for three days. This was also the year the Vietnam War ended. My step father cried while the news shows covered the withdrawal. He had served twice over there, and many of his friends had died there. In the later years of his life he suffered greatly from the exposure to Agent Orange that he endured while in Vietnam.
The military life was an interesting life but not one I was happy with at the time. When I had my own children I made sure that they had a stable home and place to live. They went to school with the same people from kindergarten to graduating from high school. It was important to me that they have the lifelong friends and a place to call home that I never did.
