The Thanksgiving Beast-Personal Narrative

Benjamin Harten
Professor Sharrock­Mueller
Writing assignment 1 The Thanksgiving Beast

I knew from the day I entered this world that life was going to be amazing to me. The only reason it didn’t happen was I had told my higher power of this plan. You see my life went into utter hell the Thanksgiving of the year I turned eleven years old, and all when a door that never seemed to open, finally got slammed shut. I was born September 1, 1995, I weighed ten pounds ten ounces and was given the name Benjamin Solomon Harten. I was born with a multitude of allergies to the point where my parents used to eat nothing but ramen and hot dogs, sometimes nothing at all, just so that I would be able to get a nutritious meal each day. The thing
To the average american the day was yet another Thanksgiving. A day where the family gets together and the men watch and play football. All the while, the ladies cook the feast to come by standing in the kitchen trying to outdo each other for their past year. My family’s had been decided to be held at my

aunt Kimberly’s house that year. When we had arrived I immediately began to get together with my cousins and rough house. When we were called in for supper all I could think was how much
I really didn’t want any of aunt Terry’s mashed potatoes because they were so dry. We all gathered for Grace then the cousins went and sat at their table in the living room, and the adults went to their own table just a few feet away inside the dining room. My father was the exception though, he took his folding chair and set it on the wall as if dinner had already passed and it was time to clean. “Mikey, seriously what are you doing? Wait where are you going? Mikey…?”
My mother turned to me and asked that I check to see what the matter was with him. I got up out of my chair, and followed him out to the yard. When I arrived to the point where the ramp met the sidewalk, my father turned to look at me, as he opened the trunk he had always claimed was broken, and spoke seven simple words to me “I am doing this because of you.” and pulled out a suitcase and slammed the trunk door shut with a bang loud enough that rivaled the sound of my breaking heart as he drove off to go have dinner with his mistress's family.
Before Michael, my father, left, I had always taken what life had given me for granted:
There was 3rd grade when I knocked my best friend out for reasons I no longer remember, and
2nd grade when i had thrown all my christmas gifts from my parents away, simply because they hadn’t bought me Captain Crunch. These are simply a few of the many ungrateful things I had done as a child. In the first few months after Michael left, I didn’t have enough time to realize just what exactly had happened to my family. My mother went into a deep depression that forced me to grow up much faster than the average child should be allowed to. I remember eating