* Hooked [on to Our Past]

This week, my personal favorite, student-produced essay is “Hooked.” The other two responses are good, but they don’t evoke the feelings and memories YZF93 (author’s questionable choice for a name) was able to establish. The essay is about YZF93’s remarkable days of exploring and fishing. Now, I am not a big fisher, only have a few times, but that’s not the point of the response. It’s the feelings that matter, the feeling of finally passing that “dead end street,” on a “Walmart bike” not knowing what’s to come. (For the record, I also purchased a Walmart bike) It’s the feeling that I most connected with. Reading paragraph by paragraph, all these memories came across in my mind, all the things I used to do and how much fun I had doing them. Things like Pokémon cards, cops and robbers, and tag were what I lived for. I did those things every second of every day and yet, I loved every second of it. The feeling of excitement when I saw a new Pokémon card or the feeling of not being “it” and reaching “the base” were my main goals, and now they seem so silly. Reading “Hooked” not only gave me something to do with my time, but also brought back memories that I completely forgot. It’s not the words I connected with, but the interpretation.