Memories

I wrote this as extra credit for English. It seems a bit formal, but I rather like it better than the other piece I'm going to turn in. In any event the piece is called "Wonder Wall (A Memory." The wall described is actually in my room (shock!). When I go off to college I'll probably take it all down, pack it up and bring it with me. Every last item. I love my wall. (P.S.- The lyric quoted at the end of the piece is from Chicago. I use to sing that song at the top of my lungs. It meant a lot to me. The song is called "Nowadays.")

The wall stares out into my room. I can feel the memories as I walk past to my bed, as I walk out of the room to the downstairs. The faces in the picture, smiling, unknowing and ignorant of the future and all that it entails. The post card a friend sent me from Edinburgh in 8th grade. The drawings made by that same friend, one of them my alter ego. The caricature drawn of me when I still had braces and long hair. I remember sitting for it, wondering what was being drawn on the other side of the table. My eyes move up to the bumper sticker I got in 8th grade as an advertisement. “Shenandoah Shakespeare: We Do it With the Lights On.” A little bit to the left my first rated-R movie that I saw by myself and the ticket to my first real rock concert. Memories contained in pieces of paper, bound to the trash can when I’m much, much older. When I have forgotten the paper’s importance, what it meant to me. When all the memories have seeped out into the ether, obtained by someone new. Below the Beatles poster sit four smiling faces. One is mine, one of the friend I relied upon in 8th grade, one of the friend who had worse it than me, one of the friend who left and changed completely. We smile for my mother’s camera, not realizing that in 50 years it will all be forgotten. Our futures on the other side of the lens, which we can’t see. A piece of paper, laminated, pinned to the wall with a push pin. A wall full of memories and stories. “In fifty years or so/ It’s going to change you know/ But oh it’s heaven/ Nowadays.”