[This is a paper I did for a college class about an incident that happened to me as a kid.] 

"Why don't you all go outside and play?" my mother asked as she carried her filled laundry basket toward the glass storm door. "It's too nice out to stay here in the garage." Her voice echoed off the cement floor as the poorly-adjusted door slammed behind the fading image of her body.

Why should we listen to her? We were completely content in the garage, playing our various games. Why should the five of us (my sister, Michelle; three neighborhood friends, and I) allow the weather to alter our plans? So what if the sun was shining brightly to complement the warm breeze blowing outside; we wanted to play inside. Besides, I was six whole years old; Mother Nature shouldn't be allowed to push me around.

[This is a satiral essay I did as an eleventh grade English class assignment.]

Many things are characterized by the color black. Such things are usually negative. For example, the Black snakes, the Black Widow spider, Black spot (a plant disease), blackball, and the Black Plague. Of course, there are many others, and just within recent years, Americans have termed the phrase "Black Friday" to a dreadful date of the household calendar. No, this isn't another type of Easter holiday like Good Friday. This has very little to do with anything pleasant (I never knew what was so good about Good Friday, anyway). Yes, I'm talking about the day which once a year stikes the healthy, wealthy, and wise (sometimes the sick, poor, and stupid, too). Yes, yes, yes, this is the great day which affects almost all of mankind: the day after Thanksgiving when the Christmas shopping season starts with a big bang. This is termed Black Friday not only because it is so detrimental to Americans' bank accounts, but also because it is the time of year when stores' accounts come out of the red and go into the black. This day (the fourth Friday in November) is known by the familiar symptoms of pushing and shoving, nerves at a high stress level, discourteous people, aching feet, and heaping shopping bags dangling from slouched shoulders. I think this day is only for the fun of seeing just how many people can fit into a shopping mall. If you're into robbing stores, today might be a good day to perform your acts; or would it--the stores also like to stock up on policemen on this great "holiday", so maybe it would be better to rob a bank on this day, while all the cops are in the shopping center (just make sure the bank you hold up isn't in the shopping mall too). I think it is interesting that you see almost no one throwing coins into the fountains on Black Friday. The shoppers don't have even a penny to spare. You'd think someone would throw in a penny and wish for more money. No, it would probably just fly back out and hit them in the eye or something. Black Friday is the day when you have to wait in line for everything: the checkout counter, the restaurants, the escalators and elevators, the rest rooms, and even the little seats in the mall (the ones surrounded by those cheap artificial plants). Oh, I almost forgot--even before you get in the mall, you'll probably have to walk at least five miles unless you come before seven in the morning to get a good parking place. Alot of people do--they arrive before dawn and light up their portable grills on the parking lot for a great ham and egg breakfast. But after it's all over, you'll be so relieved, won't you?