My Grandma

My Grandma isn't like anyones grandma. I swear she is like a super grandma! She plays basketball with me and my little brother even though she is 62! Shes even tried to play COD. My grandma has ambitions, she still wants to get a tattoo. She is always there for me, my brother, and my mom. "Grandma we're starving" My brother and I tell her. "Well I'm in town what do you want to eat?" She replies 80% of the time. I guess you could say my grandma spoils me. Not so much with material, but love. Has the most unconditional love I have ever seen or experienced before. She is never self center and rarely thinks of herself. For example if we invited her over for a surprise dinner, she would end up cleaning the kitchen and washing the dishes! Even after we tell her not to, we catch her cleaning something. "Grandma! Put that down your suppose to be relaxing right now!" We say as she puts the dishes away. "Oh well let me just put the rest away!" She'll reply. Whenever my grandma wants to take us out to eat and asks us where we want to go we'll say "McDonalds" or "Taco Bell" and she'll reply "No not more of that garbage, why don't we get you a salad and some fruit." She's always concerned about our health. My Grandma is very neat and likes to have stuff clean. When I was growing up my mom would tell me to clean my room and I naturally wouldn't want to but I'd have my good ol' granny behind me saying "Come on Bubba we can get it done in five minutes." The funny thing is, after 19 years of doing that she will still say the same thing. Basically all it comes down to is I love my Granny with all of my heart.

My Knee

My 7th grade summer I went to a summer camp called Lutheran Island Camp. First couple of days past and it was seeming to be like any other camp I had attended previously. Fishing, campfires, games etc. One day the camp as a whole was playing a game called Eagles Nest. The object of the game is to take the "eggs" from the other teams nest and bring it back to yours without being tagged. I was running with my counselor to the other teams nest, we grabbed one egg and were running back to our nest. An opposing team memeber was heading toward us to I passed off the egg to my counselor as I ran down a little divot in the ground, when suddenly I heard a loud pop and fell to the ground. An excruciating pain was coming from my left knee as I layed on the ground holding it. The camp counselors came over helped me to a bech and got me a bag of ice, and some crutches. My knee swelled up to the size of a grape fruit.One counselor told me he thought I had sprained my knee and to stay off of it for the rest of my time at camp, and that it should heal up fast. After the week was over and the camp was done my mom came and got me. She brought me straight to the emergency room. I got a couple of X-rays and soon found out that my simple "knee sprain that should heal up soon" wasn't so simple. Infact I had dislocated my knee and chipped part of my knee cap off. On top of that it required surgery to fix! So after I had gotten the surgery it took many doctors visits and physical therapy to get it to standard working position, but every since my knees haven't been the same since.

Tim O'brien Essay

Tim O'brien tells stories of the war in Vietnam. He starts off with the death of Curt Lemon. Curt's best friend Rat, writes a letter to his sister telling her how great of a man he was. After no response he calls her a dumb cooze. O'brien goes on to explain how Curt died. Rat and Curt played a game they call yellow mother, where they threw a smoke grenade back and forth until one of them chickened out or it went off. Who ever had it last was the yellow mother. Rat threw the smoke grenade to far and Curt ended up stepping on a booby trap and blowing up. His body landed up in a tree. So a couple guys from the platoon had to climb the tree and retrieve the body parts. O'brien combats the gore of the scene by covering up how terrible it really was. He says how it was almost beautiful because of the sun rays coming down through the trees.

What I ended up taking away from this was soldiers at war see a lot of bad things, but when they come back and/or tell the stories they end up not telling the whole thing, or make it out better than what it was. That the soldiers invent some of the stories or at least parts of them. Basically that it is hard to distinguish between the true war experience and story telling.