Personal Narrative: Fireworks with the Family
For the mapping of a memory, I decided to do mine on when my brother, my mom and I like to set off fireworks during the week of the 4th of July and we would always drive to Phantom Fireworks first to buy a whole bunch of fireworks to celebrate with my grandparents. Every year, we would go to my grandparents house the day before the 4th of July to set off fireworks on top of their hill in Lancaster, Oh. In my family, it is a tradition that we go out and buy as many fireworks that were in a bundle along with coupons that allow us to get 2 free ones. We would leave early in the day, letting my grandparents know that we are planning to come down to grill out and set off fireworks. We would drive halfway into Lancaster, my moms hometown, and stop at Phantom Fireworks.
We would let my brother choose the fireworks, since he is an expert of what will be the best to set off and which is better based on how much is in it. My brother usually picks out bundles that have 4 bottle rockets or more. We would see based on the picture of what the firework looks like when it is set off. I like these because they contain more in the bundle and they are louder than others. Typically in Phantom Fireworks, we would be in there for an hour to look at them and the best thing I got to do was help my brother look for some and ask him if this firework would be good and surely every time, I picked out good ones. My brother and I would carefully put them in the cart, since we are afraid of dropping them. We would spend over $200 dollars but it would actually be less because of coupons and get free fireworks as well. The fireworks that are some of our favorites are the rockets that shoot up into the sky, firecrackers that we set on the ground and it shoots off mini ones with a finale at the end. My personal favorite is roman candles because you can hold it in your hand and it shoots off each rocket in the air each time.
Finally, we would drive to our grandparents to store them until it is dark at night. We would have burgers, hot dogs, papaw’s homemade macaroni salad and drinks and share what we got and how school is going. Cameron and I would go up the hill with the fireworks and he would choose which one to set off first and I would help by setting it down and he would light it. Every time the neighbors and people were driving by, they would stop and park their cars on the grass and sit in their lounge chairs and sit on blankets to watch the show. We would hear cheering and shouting all day.
We would use the big fireworks as what we call the BIG FINALE and we would light the biggest one and see how it lasts longer than the other fireworks. Every year we would do this, it is better each time. Neighbors and people in Lancaster would cheer and tell us to do it again. What’s funny is that my grandfather would come up the hill on his tractor with pitchers of water and pour it on the used fireworks and it is funny for us to see him coming up. I can see why it is so funny since my grandparents live on a huge acre of land and it is my mom’s hometown where she grew up on a farm, where papaw used the tractor often to water flowers.
Reflection:
While writing my personal narrative, I would say that I was able to put in a lot of detail into my narrative by saying what I did in describing what I did with my family and breaking the story into different parts. Based on the feedback I received, it was really good feedback that I used specific details that bring the story to life, mentioning my family, the types of food. My writing conveys the excitement and joy of my family tradition. From hearing from my audience of what they thought was good and it has allowed me to look back to see what I could add into my writing about the things I described about the people in the story. What I might do differently with my composition is by starting out the story by describing what is going on first and add in more detail of what is included, making it come alive for the audience to picture it in their minds. I would like to talk about why this is important in the story. I would like to go back to my writing to see what I could change to make it sound better and continue to work on it to have the audience see it come alive as they read it. What I have learned as a composer is that, adding more detail to who I am describing in the story allows the audience to read about the people in the story. It allows the audience to see what the story is about and what the story conveys.