New York City

This is a personal narrative that I recently found. I wrote it for my Utah State English class my senior year of high school (I was 17 years old). And.... I got an A+ on it. Ha ha! The teacher talked about it for a month. I'm still pretty proud of it. ;) Enjoy!

New York City

Cars honking, people rushing, sirens screaming, buildings soaring. The sights and sounds of New York City have always attracted me with its exciting modern charm. New York, the world's most famed and treasured city, with its hot dog stands and colossal buildings adding to the thrilling atmosphere.
Standing on top of the most illustrious skyscraper in the world, the Empire State Building, I look down and notice the tiny cars, silent and ant-sized, weaving around each other, in and out of traffic. The most prominent noise is the soft touch of a small breeze and the quiet whisper of amazed tourists. I look at the horizon and all I can see are lights, stretching as far as the eye can see and creating a subtle glow in the cool night sky. I feel both small and big at the same time. It will never be explained with words or justified with pictures. I can't share with anyone this feeling I have, like I'm king of the world, no matter how intelligent they claim to be.
Descending from one of the highest places in New York, I enter one of the lowest. A place where rats skulk and pickpockets lurk around every corner. A place reeking with a scent unique only to New York: a mixture of sewage, stale cigarette smoke, and pizza. A place filled with the scream of brakes and the clickety-clackety sound of the trans' wheels echoing throughout the concrete tunnels. As I stand there, taking in the murkiness of the subway, a man in a suit runs past me and jumps onto a departing train, just barely missing getting squashed by the closing doors. I remember once accidentally dumping all of the loose change in my wallet all over the floor while reaching for my subway pass. Little children swarmed around me from out of nowhere, all offering to pick up my runaway coins. I quickly went from eight cents in change to about twenty cents, as each child claimed his or her victory over the stupid "country boy." I smiled to myself and told him to keep the change.
My first ride in a subway car was perhaps the most uncomfortable ride of my life. I was way beyond the boundaries of my comfort zone. The seats looked and smelled as if they hadn't been cleaned in years. Graffiti protesting war and advocating the rights of animals littered the walls. And oh, the people! I wasn't used to seeing teenage girls with body piercings in places that I didn't even know could be pierced. I wasn't used to black men, massive and bald, who looked like they would kill me rather than sit next to me. I wasn't even used to bearded Jewish men; in fact, I hadn't even seen a Jewish person until I cam to New York City! What I was used to were white "Mormon" people who all believed the same things and behaved the same way. I was a bit skeptical about meeting strange and new people, people that I thought of as scary. I even went so far as to consider myself more superior than the people walking past me in the street... at least, I did until I got lost.
I wasn't really lost forever in the jungle of steel and concrete, although it sure felt like it. I was probably really only a few blocks from where I was supposed to be, my hotel. I looked around for someone who looked like they wouldn't kill me, someone who looked like a "white Mormon." But the only people around me were black. "Oh man," I thought to myself. "This is it. This is where I'm going to die, lost in this unfamiliar place of cement." Then my eye caught sight of the least deadly-looking black man. My heart beating furiously and my palms sweating, I said, "Excuse me, sir. Can you direct me to this street?" My heart stopped. "This is it," I thought. "This is where he kills me." I waited for the knife to cut across my throat, spilling my life blood all over the gum covered sidewalk. But instead of pulling out a knife, the man gave ma big toothy grin. "Sure man," he replied. I let out a huge sigh of relief. The man proceeded to give me very detailed and helpful directions to the street my hotel was on. Then he wished me good luck and I went on my way. "That wasn't so bad," I told myself. "And I'm still alive."
Looking back on all my experiences from New York City, I realize how much I grew from them, even though I didn't realize it at the time. The major lesson I learned was that no matter where you go, people are always the same. We all have the same goals and desires in life. New York City is one of my absolute favorite places because of all of the growing that went on inside of me. I hope to someday visit this amazing and dear place again.