Cliff-Personal Narrative

This summer I had so much fun doing outdoor activities. On a birthday trip to Pigeon Forge, TN, with my family, we did a ropes course, went zip lining, and went rafting. Doing all those activities in one day filled me with excitement and fear at the same time. At the end of the day, I was tired but happy!

Everyone including his parents, Mr. And Mrs. Atkinson and his older brothers, James and Jackson, who had jumped the cliff years ago, excitedly waited for the third of June when the youngest member of the Atkinson family would fulfill the tradition. However, what they didn’t know was that Daniel had a fear of heights that he had hidden from everyone his whole life. He thought he could just keep it a secret and-and no one would ever find out. But it wasn’t easy to hide a fear of eighths when a whole town stood behind you, waiting for you to jump off a cliff 98 feet above ground

The Golden Gate Bridge, a monument to human ingenuity, is also notoriously known for being a popular destination for the suicidal. The chilling documentary “The Bridge” by Eric Steel (2006) gives viewers a glimpse into the lives of those who jumped during the year of 2004.

“If you don 't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim” (41). Although Rex Walls was not always an admirable father and role model, he did make an essential point while teaching his daughter, Jeannette, how to swim. In life, not everything comes without resistance. As Jeannette Walls describes throughout her life story, sometimes people are forced to face hardships that make them question their whole life. However, as seen in her book, it is important to learn to take those hardships and use them to shape one’s future for the better. In her memoir, The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls describes her unique childhood through motifs, complex symbolism, and progressive tones in order to demonstrate how one’s past positively influences their future.

In “The Pit and the Pendulum”, the author manages to incorporate suspense into several parts of this story. One example is where it states, “I was sick—sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence—the dread sentence of death—was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum.” This shows how the author created suspense by not telling the reader about why the narrator was receiving a death sentence. This piece of text is suspenseful to the reader because the reader does not know where the narrator is or what time period this event

The fear of falling was overpowering, it made me feel weak and scared. One Saturday my father, stepmother, little sister and I were headed out to our family's Cabin to go tubing behind Russ` speedboat on Lake May.

You never know how helpless you are until you have a near death experience. One summer, when I was young, my family and I went to a water park. I didn’t know how to swim, but thankfully the majority of the park required no swimming ability. For one of the rides, I wanted to get out of my tube and jump around, but once I climbed out, I immediately sunk to the bottom. I tried to kick back up and just as my legs gave in, a lifeguard climbed in and pulled me up. I was grateful to him, but something was bothering me. I couldn’t save myself. That was the moment I decided that I was going to become a lifeguard someday to help myself and many others.

The wind bites junior Nathan Hoy’s neck where his helmet ends but not yet where his jumpsuit begins as he opens the door of the plane, revealing nothing but a vast passage of air below. His altimeter fastened to his wrist, his 30-pound pack secure, he leans closer to the open plane door for the countdown. 5,4,3,2,1. The descent begins. There is no one to turn to now. Completely alone, 14,000 feet above the ground, the responsibility of surviving this jump lies solely on the shoulders of a 17-year-old boy.

A warm morning, sun shining with a slight breeze, and calm waters; the perfect day to learn how to water ski. I had never been water skiing before, I barely knew what it was, I was anxious to say in the least. I stood on the dock as my parents maneuvered the boat into the water, I’ve never been so uncertain. My family reassured me that everything would be okay as I was strapped up my life jacket. I stood on the edge of the boat, apprehensive, but I had to jump in the water, it was now or never.

A four letter word effects humans whether awake or asleep, fear. Fear has multiple forms depending of the focus of the person. A few of the possibilities are fear of water, heights, and fearing future choices. Some as the fear of the water could easily be defeated while others are harder to truly find the source. The child in Alden Nowlan’s “Aunt Jane” mysteriously describes fear, both current and future, during an aunt’s last decade in life. Readers will discover two types of fear and a possible way to keep fear away. Readers at first glance should discover the speaker, a little child, is describing an aunt probably after a life altering event or stroke.

I kicked and flailed and thrashed my way to the surface, gasping for air, and reached out to Dad. But he pulled back, and I didn’t feel his hands around me until I’d sunk one more time. (Walls 66)

It was the 24th of April, when Mindy and Thalia Montgomery had first been reported missing, by the frantic mother of the two girls. East Tilda had participated in the largest man hunt the town had experienced since 1987 (when young Eric Batters had gone missing, only to be found three days later hiding in a secret room in his basement, because his parents hadn't allowed him to go the local arcade), every abled body was on the lookout, all with the same goal; to find the two girls. This search, however, did not end with the same relief as the search for Eric Batters had done. The two girls had been found two days later by the local police force, dead, at the waters edge of Amber Lagoon, more commonly known as the infamous Dead Man's Pool; a popular destination for the youth of East Tilda. Their bodies were found lying in the large reeds at the waters edge, their necks at unnatural angles and their glassy eyes unblinking. The tide move in and out, nipping at the pruned toes of the bodies which once belonged to the two sisters, but which now were only home to mosquitos

The finish line loomed ever closer with each stride I took. Ba-dum.. Ba-dum.. Ba-dum. I could feel my heart beating wildly against my chest; the world seemed to slow down, and the tune of an Akan hymn from church service the night before echoed in my mind.

There I stood, paralyzed with fear, staring into the bottomless abyss of the ocean. Armed with only the protection of a wetsuit made simply of nylon, I was about to enter the cold, salty water and come face to face with a massive beast that could swallow me whole. Looking out in the distance, I watched the safety of Cancun disappear as I entered the world where the myths of Jaws and Moby Dick originated. As I looked out into the vast and murky water, the realization that I was about to enter the water with a colossal whale shark scared me senseless. My mind jumping all over the place, I was unable to process this harrowing fact. In that moment, my only thought was “What am I doing here?” It was a warm summer morning in the month of July, 2015.

“I’m so stressed, I’m seeing my parents in a couple weeks. It bothers me so much that I always have to be perfect around them, I’m always so stressed around my family,” Taylor says.