[Sime Sheef]

Synopsis: For anyone who loves winter and most of all sledding. A humorous piece of non-fiction, written for my sophomore AP English class. It is technically a narrative memoir with an interview(not in it).



Hazy clouds, full of lazy snow, muddled the sky-blue canvas. But it wasn't the constantly changing masterpiece above that had my attention. It was the muddy clay below splattered with the cloud-white paint. There where I sat, I watched my brother, among other people, go sledding and tumbling down the hill. I felt my heart fall and roll beside them. It picked up speed, as my heart beat raced, and started snowballing downward. Jumping the monstrous ramp it flew through the air and with one plop and one gulp, it was gone, down into the pit of the earth and the pit of my stomach.

The sled beneath me rocked back and forth in the direction of the ramp. The first times weren't bad. They might have been full of slush at the end but they didn't end in pain, and they weren't scary. I was ready...I thought. One last heave and the power of a father enjoying himself, launched me, his little boy, forward, hurtling me, icy wind eddying around my body and face, towards my apparent doom. Faster than my eyes could communicate with my brain, I was at the edge of the ramp leaving dead-end snow-ruts. I flew through the air, higher and faster than the usual dare-devil did, seemingly weightless. Down the hill, my brother, who had just landed from his flight, turned around to observe me and, my being his older brother, what he thought would be my perfect landing. My father, contrastingly, stood at the top of the mountain and, similarly, watched my ascent. Light piercing the clouds reflected off me and ran to each of their eyes. Both saw the vague-blue sled come out from under me and fly ahead with ease, slicing through the wind. The back end tried to cut ahead of the front whose steering rope was weighted in my grasp. Suddenly, my momentum changed. I slowed down and dropped like lead to the ground twenty-feet below. It all happened too suddenly for me to react and the punishment was taken out on my butt. Yes, my ba-tooty, my rump, my hind end, tail. I landed and like a flick to jell-o my spine crackled and popped from my tail bone to my neck.

After sledding on for a while my brother tilted and wiped out in the slush. Soaking wet, he got up and ran to me, at the same time watching my fish-gasping-for-air expression. Seconds before he reached me, he saw me faint. I left reality for a while. While my brother yelled at me to get up, my father was still at the top puzzled. My brother, in his loving nature, kicked me. Then he knelt down, slapped me, and told me to get up a couple more times, hoping that would revive me. Right then my father thought it was a good time to see what was happening. "Well, looks like he took that badly," he said to another father, as he started to gallop down the hill.

While my body was getting a brotherly beating, my mind was exploring the party. I was at an upper-class party in a beautiful house. Lights and smiles were everywhere. Suited men walked around chattering about business and smoking cigars and beautiful woman flirted and filled the spectrum with their array of colored dresses. A woman with long black hair kept in a bun and a contagious smile, wearing a long red sequined dress and carrying a tray full of glasses, came around the group of competitors nearest me, looked at me, and held out her tray. Then I woke up, coughing and moaning. Both my brother and my father were standing over me staring. The woman and her smile was still drifting in my head and in my eyes. I can still see her now. As the smells of the mansion and the party faded away, my senses in reality came back to me. My back ached and most of all, my butt hurt!!

enjoyable to read, nice.

i love winter weather, and for some reason I love the fact that it gets darker earlier (in UK).

[adamimos]

good writing. at some points, in description of nature especially, your use and choice of adjectives is great. however, i think during descriptions of events and actions there is a slight overuse of adjectives which takes away from the actual event (also a slight overuse of commas in my opinion).

"The first times weren't bad. They might have been full of slush at the end but they didn't end in pain, and they weren't scary. I was ready...I thought. One last heave and the power of a father enjoying himself, launched me, his little boy, forward, hurtling me, icy wind eddying around my body and face, towards my apparent doom."

looking at just this section carefully i would go through slowly and decide what each piece adds, if anything. i might consider taking out "the first times weren't bad" "and they werent scary" "his little boy". or changing the wording in those sections. id probably also take out a lot of those commas. personally, i might even delete most of it, so that i was only left with something like this:

The first times weren't bad, slush filled as they were. One last heave and the power of a father enjoying himself launched me forward, icy wind eddying around my body and face.

all in all very good, i really enjoyed your word choice for the most part.