Can You Handle Change?

Can Your Life Change?

Going to the beach is supposed to be fun. You are supposed to have the time of your life. Swimming, hanging out with your friends or family, playing beach volleyball, going out afterwards, and so many other things that you can do at  beach, that makes that a day you can never forget. Wearing all shorts or swimwear, with flip-flops, is a look for the beach. Everyone at the beach will be wearing those. Me? I try to avoid the beach as much as possible. Up to a certain point, I am okay with the beach. When we get to the flip-flops part, I start to hate it. It’s an embarrassment to me when people see what I have on my foot. Trying to hide something, that can’t be hidden is almost impossible. Digging and dragging your feet in the sand isn’t as fun as it may sound. Coming up with different ways to hide, becomes a challenge for me and surely not a fun one. People start to look at you like you’re crazy, and you can’t stop trying to hide, but if you did they will see what you don’t want them to see.

Some may see what you’re hiding, and they may come up to you and ask, but that makes it even more difficult. It will reveal your history.

I always enjoyed history, and the things it tells you about your past. I know many people who couldn’t care less about your history, but then again who am I to judge. I love how one little detail can tell you hundreds of little things. In everyday life you can’t do that. As the saying goes, don’t judge a book by it’s cover. In history, “judging a book by it’s cover” can happen, and does happen a lot, but at the end, the real story is found. In real life people, “judge books by their covers” a lot. They see a person, and automatically make an assumption about them, even though they don’t know the real story behind that person.

I’m seventeen years old and have experienced much things that played a role in shaping my life, even though there’s more ahead of me.  At the age of seven, I made a big mistake that today I can’t change. Though I can change it’s appearance, I can’t change the experience that it carried.  

I can’t remember much things before the age of four, but I can remember most things after that age. I do remember that I was outgoing and was someone who always got in trouble. That would change very soon. I would become someone who is a completely different person from  that  “outgoing kid”.

Waking up early in a spring morning is beautiful. Just like every saturday, I woke up, did my usual morning routine, and headed outside to play with my friends. That morning, most of my friends had not come out, and the only people that were outside was one of my friend, and his little sister. I joined them and we started talking about what had happened the day before. The day before we had gotten in trouble at school and we talked about how everything that had happened was very unfair. One thing after another, and we moved the conversation into toys. I had recently gotten a new toy and my friend had not seen it. His sister went inside their house, and he came into my house. We started looking at my new toy, then we started playing around the house. I had not eaten breakfast before I got out so my mom asked us what we wanted for breakfast. My friend didn’t want anything because he had already ate, but I asked for scrambled eggs. My mom went into the kitchen and started cooking. We started to play again. As we started to play I heard my mom say,

“Don’t go in the kitchen.”

Even though she did say that, I didn’t listen. Right after she said that my little sister came up to us and said,  

“Can I play with you guys?”

We didn’t want to, so we started to run around the house and my little sister chasing after us. It became a game. Our first thought was go in the kitchen, because for some unknown reason my little sister was scared to go in the kitchen. I hid next to an open space near the oven, while my friend hid in the pantry closet. My sister couldn’t come in the kitchen because she was scared, so she ran back to her room. We both heard her leave, so we both got out of our hiding spaces, and tried to get back to our game. My friend got out and was head towards my room, I was dusting myself off from being next to the oven. As I walked towards exiting the kitchen, something poked my arm. As I turned around to see what it was, my eyes caught a pan dropping to the floor. My arm had hit the pan. As the pan dropped I felt something wet on my foot and on my sock, it was the oil that was inside the pan. I instantly thought I was in trouble. Than I felt the sizzling oil, sneak up on me. It was excruciatingly hot, and very painful. I ran around the house screaming and crying. My friend was frozen in place, wondering what he could do. My mom heard me and she ran after me, telling me  

“Everything is fine!”

She thought I was scared of getting in trouble. She didn’t know what had happened. I couldn’t speak. My ability to speak was muted by the pain of what had happened. My friend had broken out of the frozen state, and explained to my mom what had happened, while I was still screaming and running around.

My mom had called my dad, so we could go to the hospital. He was the only one who could get me there. He had the car. My dad was the calm one, he was able to calm both me and my mom down. On the way to the hospital, I was in the back seat of the car, and still crying from the pain. While he was driving, my dad was also trying to calm me down, and check up on me. When I got to the hospital, I began to feel as the whole world was going to end. I don’t like hospitals, if there was a way for hospitals not to exist I would be the first person to agree with it. The doctors rushed me into the emergency room, and that was the last thing I saw . I didn’t see what the doctors did to me, I don’t remember the room, I don’t remember the doctor's faces, I don’t remember the way the hospital looked. Everything I had was focused on one thing and one thing only, the never ending pain.

I remember suddenly opening my eyes, and the first thing I wanted to see was my leg. I wanted to see if it was real. My foot was wrapped around with bandages and I realized that everything I remembered had really happened.

For the next few weeks I couldn’t put my heel down, I was too afraid to. The right foot always took steps on it’s toes. I still had to go to the doctors and they checked my foot once every week. Before the bandages got put on, the doctor rubbed a medicine on the burn and that made the bandages stick to the foot. Every week I was scared to go to the doctor because of the pain the medicine caused.

For two months I couldn’t do anything. The doctors told me I couldn’t go to school, which meant I would stay home even after school was over.

As days passed, my foot started to get better, and I began to walk normally again. I began doing things like I used to, I even got cleared from the doctor that I could play soccer, and I could do all the things I used to before. Things got better.

One of the most beautiful days I have ever seen, turned to one of the most horrible and horrific days for me. Everything that happened also reminds me of a book I have read. A book about war and soldiers journey called “The Things They Carried” strangely reminds me of my story. In the book some of the soldiers have a hard time adapting to their normal lives after the war, and the main character doesn’t have any trouble adapting at all. After everything that happened I had trouble going back to one hundred percent of me. Which is why today I try to hide my scar from people, and stay away from active kitchens. What happened that day, I will always remember as life changing.


Comments (1)

Tahmidul Bhuiyan (Student 2017)
Tahmidul Bhuiyan
  1. I've came to learn that the burn of your foot was one deep memory for Nevrid and made him feel insecure.
  2. The strategy of using scenarios event in the essay was awesome.
  3. The video ass more visualization of the actual story.