NMC Class of ’09
Memoirs
We
studied Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas, 50 x 50 by 50 Cent, and Brother
Ray by Ray Charles to learn how writers create memoirs that are engaging
and fun to read.
Click on
the white hypertext to hear students reading excerpts aloud.
In Game Panic
Jorge Aguilar
The Astros Baseball Stadium was like no other I had ever
seen. An indoor stadium that had a wall of glass as one of its sides. Another
wall connected to it and adjoined a semi circle of rows and rows of seats. There
were no walls separating the food stand from the seats. I went to the baseball
game with my sister and my other two cousins. When I walked in with the rest of
my posse, it felt so open. Light pouring through the freshly cleaned glass
windows from outside into the stadium. There was a crowd of people in the
stadium, which should have been expected. Due to the crowd, there was a lot of
noise. There were people walking, talking, shouting and laughing. Gift shops
and food stalls surrounded the rows of seats. The whole place smelled of
snacks, soda and the occasional steamy pretzel. The field itself was trim and
open, not so much space as the other stadiums I have been two, with players
already warming up.
“How are we supposed to find our
seats?” I asked to no one in particular.
“Just follow me,” my younger cousin
said. We arrived at our seats a while later. We all sat down and waited a bit
for the game to begin. Soon enough a vendor came towards our row of seats and
was shouting, “Peanuts, get your peanuts here!” quite enthusiastically.
“Over here!” my younger cousin said,
“I’ll take a bag.” My younger cousin gave the vendor pay and got us some
peanuts.
“Hey guys, I know the best place to
catch the balls,” my older cousin said, “right by the foul pole is where you
catch everything.” He asked all of us if we wanted to go with him to this
alleged foul pole. My sister and younger cousin both agreed while I said no.
“It’s better if we are separated so we
could have a better chance of getting a ball,” I said.
“Um ok whatever, see ya after the
game,” my older cousin said. They left and soon I was alone, other than the
rest of the fans around me.
The game was exciting and fun. The
Astros ended up winning
“Where’d you get those?” I asked
confusedly pointing to one of the balls.
“Oh these?” my younger cousin said, “we
caught em’.” While we were walking out of the stadium, my younger cousin
actually said that they bought them at one of the numerous gift shops. I knew they did not catch them. My posse
and I left the stadium and went to the parking lot. We waited there until my
uncle came to pick us up and bring us home.
The Ave vs.
Draven Chavous
When I was ‘bout eight years old
there was a huge fight on Ave. The Ave
is the projects on Avenue D. The fight
was between the Ave and
In both projects there are
predominately Black and Spanish kids.
When they first came I could’ve sworn there were about 60 dudes over
there. I thought to myself oh man, what’s about to go down? Remember I was only eight so at this point I
was like, oh man, what if one of them has
a gun and I get shot?
When they started to fight I heard
my whole family and everyone who was there screamed. So, I said to my cousin, “Yo, hurry up let’s
run!” I screamed.
“Ok, where?” she replied. “I have no clue just run toward Grandma’s
house.” At
this point I was terribly scared. I mean
if you were eight and you saw a bunch of people coming with weapons wouldn’t
you be scared? While we were there
scared we heard our mother’s screaming at the kids from Campos. I thought to myself, are you guys crazy, do you want to get killed?
When I was there I spent time
thinking why it happened. Then I
remembered my cousin talking about how these kids from the Ave jumped one of
them. I was sure that was the reason, but
I was not 100% sure, you know what I mean?
Like five seconds later this kid
comes up to us. Just from looking at him
I could see the fear in this kid’s eye.
I knew from looking at him that something bad was going to happen, but
what he told us in such a fearful tone was, “Go home my son, just go home and
don’t come back out.” So I did what he
said and I left.
The World’s Longest
Bus Ride
Francisco Contreras
It was
“I think I’ll be sad about not being home,” I said. We got to the bus. I reminded my mom about my camera, but the problem was that she forgot to put it in my suitcase, so she goes to the nearest store, but she went too late, I was on the bus and my mom came when the bus had left, and In that time I was thinking my mom would not care about me. I was staring out the window thinking to myself,
“Why did I even want to go to camp? It’s just wasting my
summer vacation, all I’m going to do is school work in a camp far from the city
without electronics,” I said.
I was thinking to my self about how my whole family would
miss me a lot (I think), but that wouldn’t stand in my way so I went to sleep.
In that time had a mini night mare about how the counselors would torture us by
giving us a lot of work to do in the cabins. The bus ride was 5 hours long, but
for me it seemed to be an eternity. But the ride was fun, I made new friends
that I didn’t even have before except Ed. Ed and I went to Mary Help of
Christians, our old school. I was talking to every one and it made time pass by
quickly and we were at the first stop of the whole trip we stopped at a maxi
mini mall to eat we got off and all I did is get a cheese burger and eat it and
then I got a soda and got on the bus the stop wasn’t that fun at all I didn’t
talk or laugh so it was boring. After talking to every one (well almost
everyone) I fell asleep, all of a sudden I hear every one scream so I wake up
thinking it was something bad, like if the bus was going to crash but it
wasn’t, then Jacob almost new student about to be in Nativity, tells me that
supposedly we were at camp, so I shot up.
“I have a feeling something weird is going to happen,” I
said. The bus came to complete stop and the door opens there is a stealthy
silence and Mr. Lovallo comes in and says welcome to
The Day I Got Lost
In
Marc
Espinosa
On Septiembre
3, 2001 mi familia se fue
pa la New Port Mall in New Jersey. We have a tendency of going there in the weekend. We
sometimes go out but not always this day was different. This day I got lost. It
was a day we were getting my brother his present. Now that I think about it
they got my present as well. My brother’s present was a game. I believe it was
Pokemon Ruby, and I got Pokemon Sapphire.
Usually when we get to the mall, we go to the food court first.
Afterwards, nosotros usemos
la baño. That’s when I got lost. Being inpatient for
everything I left on my own. This might be funny but I didn’t know where the
bathroom was, so I just stayed in a corner.
Now that
I think I about it was an abhorrent place. He kept asking me, “How old are
you?”
I would
say, “I’m six years old.”
I would
say, “I’m Puerto Rican.”
Or
even “Do you usually run away?”
I would say, “I told you already I got lost.”
Soon enough we came to this room that was suffocating. I
glimpsed at the intercom. It looked oxidized. I assumed this cause it was
reeking. He said in the intercom, “We have Marc Anthony in the office.” When no
one came into the room for at least thirty minutes, we left.
He asked me with a frenzied tone,
“Do you have any clue where the h*** your parents might
be”
“Maybe, in the garage.” I said with a shocked tone,
When we were going to the parking lot we saw them in the
muffin store buying a bag full of my favorite muffin. As a result, the cop left
me with a warning telling me never to leave without telling your guardian or
parent where you going. I answered saying, “Oh believe me I’ll never will.”
Everyone laughed.
Leaving My Dad Was
So Hard
Jacob Fernandez
Have you lived around your family,
moved, and missed them? Well, I had that experience. When I came to
I came to New York so that I can study to get a better education and also my parents got into a little argument. I really wasn’t excited because like I said before I basically left my whole family. Another reason is that I adapted to the environment over there. I truly did miss my dad but when I saw my uncle, Tino, in his van waiting for us I got pretty happy to see him so I ran and gave him a hug.
While we were on our way home we stopped on
When we finally got home I took a sniff and remembered the
smell from when I came to
I called my dad and told him “Bendicion papi. Llegamos
bien y tu me vas hacer mucha falta. Te quero mucho y cuidate.” The translation to that is “Hey
dad. We got here safe and I will miss you a lot. I love you
and take care” He replied “Yo te quiero mucho y tambien tu me vas hacer mucha
falta.” The
translation to that is “I also love you and miss you a lot.” I had an emotional
moment and started to cry. I knew I wasn’t going to see my dad in a while. I
remember that day like it was yesterday.
World of Warcraft
Awakening the Gamer
Within
Onix Graciani
One day Nathan was watching T.V. and a
very funny, but inappropriate for school, commercial came up advertising World
of Warcraft. He saw it and was mesmerized by how cool the game looked. Then he
kept it in the back of his mind until I came over to his house the next day.
When I got to his house the first this
he said was, “Yo we gotta check this new game out!”
Me going along with whatever Nathan
liked just replied, “Sure, ok.”
We turned to the wonderful thing
called, the Internet and looked up the website. It wasn’t hard because the
website for World of Warcraft was, WorldofWarcraft.com. The website was
awesome. It looked all cool with a lot of information on the game and a little
box in the middle explaining what was going on in the game. Below the box was a
list of past things that were going on in the game. We looked at everything to
look at, well not everything, but a lot. We hadn’t talked in a while and finally
I broke it, “Yo this is ma like…. Cool.”
“Word,” was Nathan’s only reply.
The rest of the day went by and it was
time for us to go to bed. His mom called us and actually had to tell us 5 times
to get off the computer and go to bed. Reluctantly we did.
“Whoa, whaat,” I asked drowsily.
“Dude I got the game!” came a shout
from Nathan.
I opened my eyes and saw it, World of
Warcraft, the game’s box seem to have a glow in his hands. Then I noticed that
he was standing right in front of the light bulb in the room, which also
explains why I hadn’t woke up because it was so dark.
I shot up and we instantly got to work.
By work I mean, he put the disks in and went to the T.V. while I stood on guard
duty and watched the game’s progress.
Things were looking good. We were on
the last disk and it was almost done downloading. But then I had to use the
bathroom. Each second went by as if it was an hour. I was devoted to my job but
at the same time, if I exploded I couldn’t do my job. Then going back to my
special way of thinking like a turtle walks, I came to a decision. I was going
to use the bathroom as quickly as possible. Good idea right? What’s the worst
that could happen? Well I’ll tell you one thing. This was not a good idea and
the worst went wrong. I finished using the bathroom and when I went back to the
room, I was greeted by a big fat ERROR
sign on the status bar of the download. I was two seconds away from yelling
“WHAT THE…!” but I didn’t. All I did was walk, not so calmly, over to Nathan
and deliver the horrifying news. Then we went in fast motion and put each disk
in again. Well, we went in fast motion, until the game started downloading
again. Then it was all VERY slow motion.
The day went by and we finally got the
disks done. We even created an account for Nathan. We were about to enter the
WORLD OF AZZEROTH, when Nathan’s mom yells, “NATHAN, ONIX, time for bed. Those
words hit me like lightning. Noooo, I
wouldn’t be able to play. But I was tired and fell asleep anyways.
The game was beautiful once you get
familiar with it. It seemed like only two minutes past when Nathan’s mom told
us to take a shower.
I went first as usual and I was in and
out of the shower like a bullet. It’s not that I was dirty or something, it’s just
that camp was right around the corner and I needed to get ready, speed wise. It
was Nathan’s turn. Then he asked me the question that changed my life forever.
“You wana play?”
WHAT
DID HE JUST ASK ME? Is he even talking to me? I needed to answer his
question quickly though and once again thinking like a turtle prevails…
“Yeeeeaaaa!” I half shouted, failing
at hiding my excitement. Then it seemed as though the world turned to slow
motion. He got up and logged off, VERY slowly. Then he was off, taking a
shower.
There I was. Nothing else mattered. The computer screen
was my top priority. The screen filled with vibrant shades of green for the
nature of the land and purple, the color of the sky. I was traveling around, in
game, and so focused that I didn’t notice Nathan get out of the bathroom and
creep up next to me.
“Boo!!”
“Oh my gosh!” I gasped almost catching
an asthma attack. Then I heard laughter. I turned around and saw Nathan about
to die of laughter.
“You MEANY!” I said sarcastically.
Current time, A battle rages. A lone Elf Hunter
rises above all others and kills many hordes of enemies. He is not well geared
but that doesn’t stop him. He has the more killing blows then anyone in his
group, and wants to hold his title.
That person is Onix Graciani. And to
think just 2 years ago he was about to catch asthma after his first time
playing World of Warcraft.
My Complicated
Experience with a Boneless
Nicholas Peralta
When I started skateboarding I was about 9
years old. When I finally finished learning how to ride and do beginner tricks
when I was about 12. Now I am 13 years old and I still skateboard.
So one day I’m on the sidewalk near my grandma’s house and
I was practicing my kick flip over a knocked down garbage can. It was pretty cool
feeling the air pass you as you glide from one side of the trash can to
another. Then suddenly, I heard the front door open, so I stopped to look. As I
looked I said to myself “who can this be? I didn’t see my cousin
So he answered “I’m just skating. Why?” Then I gave him that look of “you know why”,
the kinda look your Mother might give you if you did something and played dumb.
Then I said “Nothing just that I haven’t seen you skate before!” Then I looked
at him and caught his glance of approval. I think
he is giving body language of I can skate kinda thing, I thought to myself.
So I finally decided to say, “Fine let me see what you can do.” So he showed me his Ollie, Manual, and his
Kick flip. Then suddenly he stopped and did some crazy move I haven’t seen
before. Suddenly, without control, I immediately blurted out
“Wait! What was that move you just landed?”
“It’s just a move I
learned from my friend. It’s called a boneless.” Said
A Boneless? Who in the right mind
create a creepy name for an awesome stunt? I said to myself.
“Cool I guess can
you do it 2 more times so I can get the structure in my memory?” I said.
“Sure!” said
So he did it 2 more times as I watched his balance
structure and his body structure. It looked easy, but when I tried it I thought
I mostly got bruises then I had of skin. It was pretty
complicated. So finally I said to myself
ok Nick you can do this. You made it
through camp so you can handle a little trick. So off I went kick, push,
kick, push. Then finally I kicked off the back of the deck and up it went.
I felt it reach my reaching range so I grabbed it and planted my feet on it. I pulled
the deck back along with my feet. Then I let the deck go and then a loud noise
came out. It sounded a little like a skidding stop. I flipped my deck up and
ran happily to my cousin as he stood there shocked. He told me “it took me a
week to hit that trick!” Then I shrugged and laughed. Then we both went inside
to eat. Then ever since that day I was still not able to put the tenacity to
complete the Boneless again. That is how my experience with the Boneless was
and still is complicated.
Stick up Sunday
Jorge Quiroz
Me and my friend were going to hang out on a Sunday. We
agreed to meet up in the park. I remember that Sunday, we were meeting at
The park was very empty. I had on a
Zoo York shirt with shorts, blue Dunks and a White Sox hat.
Two teenage guys come up to me and
asked me where I was from. Feeling very proud after just listening to “Q.U
Hectic” by Mobb Deep, I answered, “
“My ***** give me your ******* iPod,” the suddenly not so
powerful guy in front of me said.
“I earned my **** the right way, you ain’t getting’ it,” I
answered without even realizing it.
This hateful answer shocked the angry robber for a couple of seconds, which was good. But the effect wore off and just fueled his anger. That’s when I felt his cold fist hit my jaw. He leaned into the punch with might. I bit my lip, but could not do much because there still was a guy behind me who had made his way down from my neck to my hands. He too was in shock, so much that he let go and made his way out of the park. The one who had just hit me took my hat and followed the other one out the park.
This was a very unexpected moment for
me, but I just put ma headphones back on, washed my mouth out and called my
friend to see if she was almost here. We hung out and life went on.
The Race of Cross Country
Gadriel Rivera
I
was tired but I finished. I was running with Jorge Q. Jorge Q. is one of my
friends that goes to Nativity and tried out for the Nativity’s cross country
team with me. We were in a Cross Country race in Van Cortland Park. Once the
guy said, “Go!” I booked it to the front. There were a lot of people cheering
from different schools and everything. I saw a lot of kids in blue, white, dark
blue shirts and everything. The trees were big and the track was on concrete,
so if we fell we were going to get scraped up very badly. Sprinting at the
beginning was a bad thing to do because once I hit the first turn I was tired
and I thought I was going to fall back. Since I sprinted to the front, I was
tired so I started to jog. Even though I was jogging I caught up to Jorge Q
because he was tired, too.
“Hey!” I said to Jorge.
“Yo, you remember that plan I told
you about on the way up here?” Jorge asked me.
“Yeah, why want to do the plan?” I
asked sarcastically knowing that Jorge was going to say, “Yeah.”
“Yeah, lets’ go!” Jorge said with a
smile on his face.
“Ight, lets’ be out!” I said with a
confidence grin.
Jorge’s
plan was once we hit the hill, we were going to sprint up the hill. Then we
will jog up to the garbage can and sprint it to the finish line. I thought
Jorge’s plan was great because he used it last time and he did well. So Jorge
and I started to jog until we reached the hill. Once we hit the hill Jorge told
me to sprint. So I started to accelerate up the hill. Mr. Arte started to cheer
us on. In my head I was thinking, wouldn’t I be tired when I was going up
the hill? I also noticed that the others were still jogging up the hill.
I pushed that thought out of my head and focused on what’s happening now.
We passed like twelve people, which was good. Once I saw the garbage can where
Jorge told me to sprint from, Jorge and I sped away to the finish line. While I
was sprinting to the finish line I felt a little bit of dizzy, but I still ran
to the finish line. One thing that was bothering me
though was the sound of beating feet beating hard right behind me and people
saying, “Come on, you can beat
this kid!” I got so mad that in my head I told myself, He ain’t gonna
beat me! So I sprinted ahead of him
and passed the finish line. I was dizzy. I mean come on, who wouldn’t be
tired after running a 1.5 mile race? We waited for the rest of the team to
come in. We all put our jackets on and we headed for the bus. Once we were in
the bus we got some bags of pretzels and headed back to Nativity.
As a result, the next day I found out I came in the top sixty, which is coming
in somewhere under sixty, which is good. The time I came in was around twelve
minutes and twenty-one seconds, which is very good. I was so happy that I came
in the top sixty because I never knew I could run that fast.
The Trip to
Henry Romero
As I
wake up in a bus (because I took a quick nap). Knowing no one except my 2
friends from my old school, Nick and Marc. The reason I say old school is
because I am in a 7 hour bus ride to
As I sit and look out the window, I was startled
when I hear an unfamiliar voice.
“Hey, wut up,” a kid said.
“Hi I’m Henry,” I said softly.
“kool I’m Jacob,” he said.
“Yea kool,”I replied.
“So why u here?” he asked.
“My mom made mi come," I said in a sluggish
voice.
“I KNOW!! MY MOM MADE ME TOO!!”He screamed.
“Thanks, u broke my ear drum,” I said.
“lol,” he laughed.
But I know that he screamed because of the non stop
screaming in the bus. When Jacob turns around to his seat, I rest my head on
the window.
I
start to think about my mom, my dad and my brothers. As a result I would not
see them for the next six weeks. The reason why I think this is different from
school is because I know I am going to go home and see them. I soon became sad
and my throat became tight, I started to feel scared And also will be sleeping
somewhere around people I do not know.
As I sit on the bus feeling only the vibration of
the bus parking.
Mr.
Salvatierra said,” We are going to eat lunch.”
Everyone is starting to get off the bus to go eat
McDeez. I bought myself a cheeseburger and a Fanta with fries, it was good. After we ate, we sat back on the bus and I went back to
sleep.
The Stinky Massacre
Mikal Thomas
One morning in early spring of March
at my Middle School, St. Catherine of Sienna, I came in and my friend Shayla
gave me 3 stink bombs. What would you have done in this situation? I said, what’s
the worst that can happen? iight im wit it.
Since she gave me three, I gave my two
friends, Kahlik and Juamarley, one stink bomb each. My class had gym 5th
period, so we got dressed and headed down stairs to gym. The gym teacher Mr.
Oaklafor said we had free time, so I decided to play basketball. We picked
teams and were about to start, but Mr. Oaklafor took the ball away from us
because he wanted to play. He played on the other teams and my squad picked up
somebody else. I dribbled to the left with intensity
and went around my back, and at that very moment Mr. Oaklafor went sliding the
other way and touched the floor to keep his balance, I then put the ball in the
basket in laughter. The bell rang, so while getting on line Shayla, Kahlik,
Juamarley and I went to the back of the line discussing where we where going to
do it at.
I said I have the bathroom, Shayla
said she wanted to do it in the hallway, Kahlik
did it in Mr. Stimeller’s classroom and Juamarley did it in his
homeroom.
I walked with the stink bombs into the
very subtle; I slowly put it on the floor and braced my foot onto it. I walked
out and went into the 7th grade classroom and greeted Mrs. Watson by
saying, “How was your day?” She totally ignored me and said, “My god what is
that dreadful smell, it smells like rotting eggs and milk.”
Some kids got seriously hurt, one kid
even vomited, another could barely breathe because she had asthma, so she went
home with several others. Shayla, Kahlik, Juamarley and I were so worried that
we went downstairs to the girl’s parents and wanted to make sure she was
alright. We found out the girl was fine, she just needed her asthma pump. When
all of this was going through my head I just couldn’t help to think “What have I done?”, “What will I do?”, and
“What will I tell my parents?”
When I got home I could barely
sleep, think or eat. I got to school the
next day and the whole teaching staff was trying to make deals with the class
to tell all four of us, but it didn’t work.
Weeks passed by and nobody told, but somebody got tired of the
consecutive extra homework, so they told.
Later in the day the class found out that
Hit and
Run!!!
Edward Urena
I was
about eight years old when I took a doodoo in the pool. That right there was the
worst moment in my life. What was most terrifying was the fact that my doodoo
looked like junior mints and that I was on the verge of eating it. It is
disgusting, but I ate it. Just kidding. Ha! Gotcha! I betcha peed your pants
there didn't ya? Anyway, from that moment I thought of what to do. All of a
sudden I knew what to do. That was to leave the premises as soon as
I could before anybody got to see the horrifying sight of junior mints
laid by a human being. I hated myself for this. I felt like committing
suicide. You know this is kinda funny
because it has to do something with reverse psychology in a way that chicken
lay eggs and humans lay junior mints. But except that adults lay burnt hot dogs
that the main difference. Anyway, I told my mom that I didn't want to go back in the
pool anymore because there were little pebbles in the pool.
"Pebbles?"
my mom said.
"Ugh..
Yeah," I said." The kind of pebbles you find on the
ground."
"Oh
Sugarplum," my mom said in a sweet tone,"are you all
right?"
"Umm...
well let’s see Mom. Do you mean all right as in my day is going all right or
all right as in I HAVE DIARRHEA AND I’M ABOUT TO CREATE WORLD WAR 3 IN THE
BATHROOM!”