Tell a story from your childhood. Dig deep and try to be descriptive about what you remember and how you felt.
Since I'm writing this kind of early (sorry, I knew I wouldn't have time while I'm in SF!), I'll write about a story that makes me a little nervous to get on an airplane.
Now, I've flown before; about 3 or 4 times down to Houston in the last few years, and I've flown once to Vegas when I was a kid. But if you ever hear me talk about getting on an airplane, you know how nervous I get. Here's why:
My step-dad was an ER nurse down in Houston. Some of the doctors that worked in the ER liked to have hobbies. One of the doctors was a former NASA astronaut. Another one was a pilot who had is own personal plane. It fit about 12-15 people.
One day, they had all planned on taking a trip down to a river. I have no idea what river. Mind you I'm about 4 or 5. All the doctors and nurses go, and they bring their families. So there are a handful of women, a bunch of men, and I may or may not be the only child.
Well, we spend the day at the river, some of them go tubing, I'm too small so I stay and play in the sand and dirt on the side of the river with my mom.
By the end of the trip we get back on the plane and head back to the airport.
On our way to the landing strip (we're about 10 minutes out I presume) the pilot/doctor starts talking about something going wrong. Now, I have no earthly clue what's going on, but I start seeing all the men running around trying to figure out what's wrong with the plane. Come to find out, the landing gear is stuck and the wheels won't come down. They try and try and try to get them unstuck, and I remember a guy climbing down into the wheel cargo to try and manually pushing them out to no avail.
So the pilot starts radioing the air traffic control people and they come to a conclusion that we have to crash land the plan. By this point my mom is having a heart attack and crying while I'm sitting there wondering why this ride is so bumpy. (Gotta love 4 to 5 year old me)
We start descending into an area of the landing strip with a bunch of grass, since that's what air traffic told the pilot to do. He lands us rather roughly into the grass and gets us out of the airplane.
By the time we got out of the plane, I remember there being black smoke EVERYWHERE. Billowing out of the bottom of the airplane, since we just skidded quite a few hundred feet on it. Then these men come running up to us out of no where wearing what I called ninja suits (they legit looked like ninjas!) and grabbed me and quickly assisted everyone else away from the plane just in case it exploded.
So that's a story from my childhood! Exciting, right?
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