Autobiography Final
Kirkwood Comp I
12/6/13
If Birds Can Do It
Over last Christmas break, my family traveled to Southern California for our first vacation in several years. It was everyone’s first trip to the area and, prior to leaving, each of us researched things we wanted to do while there. I have always been afraid of trying new things, including hanging from a wire going up to 60 miles per hour, but one of the things my sister wanted to do was go zip lining. I didn’t really want to, but nonetheless, my gut was telling me to go for it and try something new. So that’s what we did. We took our rental car and drove all morning to a small hut-like shack that was well hidden from the main road. When we got there, I was still a bit hesitant about doing it, but I knew I probably wouldn’t get another chance to do anything like it again. So, I never told anyone that I was nervous about it, and just did what everyone else was doing. I rode the zip line and, without even thinking about it being something different and new, had a great time with it. It was a different feeling than I had ever felt before.
First it was that feeling like a new born bird, just learning to fly, or being pushed out of the nest. Then, the feeling turned into the same little bird falling and falling, until finally, I did what any young bird would do, I flew. I felt the anxiety building up within me as I watched my sister and father take off on the very first zip line. Then, the pressure was on to live up to every little bird that learned to fly, and I didn’t let myself, or my family down.
I took off, and unintentionally was flipped upside down right off the bat. Which made my heart race, because I still wasn’t exactly comfortable with what I was getting myself into. Once some of the initial anxiety wore off, I realized it wasn’t as bad or dangerous as I had previously thought. After I got unhooked from the first line, we hiked to another line that was higher, and longer than the first. I was the first one of our group to go for the rest of the lines, because the success of the first had settled all of my nerves and I was excited to go on the rest of the ropes and “show my sister and father up,” as my mother stated it.
Since that day, there have been multiple times when I have doubted myself, and my gut instinct. Similar to the zip lining “incident,” later the same day we were headed back to Los Angeles to eat lunch and continue doing new, interesting things, when my mother suggested we find someplace with fish tacos. I do like some types of fish, but I had never really had any freshly caught fish, and especially never as a fish taco. I wasn’t really interested in having fish tacos, but we