Brandon
Toosday September 8
Today was our therd day of therd grade. Miss Bean told us that we where going to start riting in a gernal so we can get better at riting and spelling. But she didn’t tell us what to rite about. She said we could rite anything. Miss Bean is not going to give us a grade for the gernal. It is just practice, so I can rilly rite about n e thing that I want to. Today I’m gonna rite about the trip I took with my dad this summer.
For my whole entire life, it felt like my dad didn’t know that I existed. He always left for work befor I woke up for school and came home late and tired at nite. I almost never saw him and hardly ever played with him. One morning I woke up early and was looking out of my bedroom window watching the sun come out. The red, orang, and yellows blended together in the sky as the sun rose, almost like a rainbow. As the sun got hirer and hirer, I saw that my dad was outside packing up his truck. I thought he was leaving again for one of his work trips. I wasn’t sure what his job was, but I rilly wanted to find out. Since it was summer and I didn’t have school, I decided to ask if I could come with him.
I ran down the hallway and grabbed the thick, maple-wood banister as I flew down the stairs. I didn’t have time to stop to ask my mom, besides, I didn’t see her as I ran to the front door. She was probably still asleep. My dad hardly looked up when I burst from the front door, pushing the rickety screen door open, as I barreled towards him. It wasn’t until I was rite in front of him that I realized that he was waring a faded blue flannel shirt and dingy blue jeans with holes. Then I new he wasn’t going to work, but I still asked if I could go with him. He looked at me rilly hard, looked at his watch, and then told me to get in the truck.
I was still wearing my sports shorts and t-shirt from the night before, but I jumped right in the front seat and buckled my seat belt. My dad still had a bunch of stuff to pack, but I wanted to make sure that I was completely redy when it was time to go. I watched as he finished loading the coolers, beer, and a greenish brown bag that had hooks with feathers dangling from it. He told me that he needed to run inside to get a couple more things. When he emerged from the front door, I finally knew where we were going. He was carrying three fishing rods. The smallest one looked almost brand new.
As my dad slid into the driver’s seat, I asked him if he told mom that I was going with him. He laughed, “I’m a man, I don’t need to get permission from your mom.”
I started to say something, but he shot me a shut up look and I stopped talking. I didn’t want him to change his mind about letting me come with him.
The engine roared to a start and we were on our way. I don’t remember a lot about the drive. I remember my dad turning on the radio and my eyes getting heavy. The next I knew, my head was slamming into side window. I sat up fast and wiped the drool from the side of my face hoping that my dad didn’t see it, but he did. He laughed at me and handed me a tissue from the glove compartment.
The truck slowed as we neared a huge oak tree and turned onto a dirt road. Both of us bounced around in the cabin as trees became more prevalent than homes. The truck rolled to a stop in front of a little clearing and my dad cut the engine. “We’re here,” he announced as he opened his door. He reached into the back of the truck, pulled out a small pair of hiking boots, and threw them onto the seat next to me without saying a word. I looked down at my feet; I hadn’t even realized that I was wearing socks and slippers. I slid on the boots, climbed out of the track, and fell face first into a big puddle of mud. My dad laughed and grunted, “Welcome to the jungle.”
“We don’t have jungles in North America,” I pointed out as I wiped away the mud with my shirt. “Ok Tarzan. Here spray this on your skin, you don’t want to get any tics,” he said as he threw me the bug spray from his backpack, then he started on the long mission to unload the truck.
I laughed as I sprayed on the repelant. How did he know that Tarzan was my favorite movie? My heart was pounding and I couldn’t stop smiling. Me and my dad were together, just me and him, finally.
I looked around a bit and finally saw where we would be fishing. A little ways off, surrounded by trees, I saw a large lake with an unpainted wooden cottage beside it and a blue boat tied to a post. “Is that where we’re going to stay?”
“We’re not staying anywhere if you don’t start helping me take this shit out of the truck.”
I figured out that we weren’t going anywhere, but to that clearing. My dad pulled a huge pile of rods and red cloth from one of the bags that he had packed. Turns out, it was a tent. Though the tent was far from new, I don’t think he had ever used it before cause he kept reading the instruction over and over again, but still couldn’t get it together rite. The first time there were poles left over and the tent was tilting to the left. Then all of the poles were in it, but it didn’t stand up strate. He got it right when we used teamwork. I red him the directions and he focused on set-up. We were the perfect team.
I’ve never been more terrified in my whole life than when we were sleeping in that tent! All I could think about were the bares that were probably making there way towards us while we were asleep. Well, that’s all I could think about until I heard the wolves. My dad was fast asleep, probably tired from all the fishing, camp fire building, and hiking. I didn’t want to wake him up, knowing that he’d call me a punk and tell me to go to sleep, I just layed there in silence. Even though I knew the ants were making there way to my sleeping bag to eat the candy that was hiding in my pocket, the bares were closing in on us to snack on the leftover fish, and the wolves were just outside of our tent howling at the moon, I still didn’t want to be anywhere else that night except right beside of dad.