Kaytlyn Burke's writing experiences

A Theme Learned from Your(My) Life Story (Sep 14, 2020)

When I was five or six my brother Kyle our friend Caleb and I were playing Kings and Queens of the hill in the woods behind Caleb’s house. When we were running in the woods, Caleb was the first to become king of the hill although his was a little small. Kyle and I kept on running. Kyle was the next one to become king of the hill, his was bigger than Caleb‘s. I was the only one left who hasn’t found a hill to rule over yet. I looked back at my brother and his hill, admiring how big his hill was, then I started to feel anger and jealousy bubble up inside trying to escape. I eventually began to run off from my brothers hill in search of my own hill that would beat the size of my brothers.

I kept on running nonstop, then I come to a stop with my jaw hanging open and my eyes popped out of their sockets staring at what’s in front of me! Right in front of me I see a Huge hill almost the size of a house! “Ok, I may have exaggerated a bit there, but it surely was a lot bigger then what my brothers was!” I thought to myself. I then ran up to the very top of my hill, and screamed as loud as I could to signal Kyle and Caleb that I found my hill, then all three of us yelled at the very top of our lungs. “I’m the King/Queen of the hill” we all yelled at once.

That’s when I started to feel an unbearable pain all over my body. It felt like I just jumped into a volcano full of lava! I looked down on me to only see red ants of all different sizes crawling all over me! I then screamed out in agonizing pain. “Kyle, Caleb Help Me it Hurts!” I screamed while crying my eyes out.

I wasn’t sure how much more of that pain I could take. When Kyle and Caleb got to me Kyle yelled out to me saying “Kaytlyn what are you doing up there, that’s not a hill it’s a Fire Ant Colony!” Kyle yelled with a hint of fear and worry in his voice.

“Caleb run to my house and tell my parents what’s going on.” I hear Kyle tell Caleb. Caleb did as he was told and left to tell my parents what’s going on.

As Caleb left I wobbled down the fire ant colony that I’d thought to be a hill barely able to hold myself up because my whole body was in so much pain. Kyle picked me up on his back to take me home. At that point I just couldn’t take anymore more of the unbearable Pain and fell asleep on my brothers back and my head laying on his shoulder. By the time we got home my parents were getting ready to pack up the garage sale. After what Caleb told my mom she was so worried, then she saw Kyle carrying me on his back. Mom took me off his back and immediately stripped me of all my clothes and took me inside. She put me in the bathtub, woke me up and gave me a nice and relaxing oatmeal bath to help with the pain. When she was done she helped me get dressed and sat me down on the couch to get some sleep.

The Theme that I learned from the conflict is... If you ever feel negative feelings like jealousy, do not let them take over you, or a bad impact will come your way! I had felt jealous of the size of my brothers hill and I let that feeling take over and fuel me to find a bigger hill then his and when I did that’s when the bad impact came my way. The bad impact is my hill being a fire ant colony and all that pain I had felt.
Note: The reason why the pain I felt had felt so bad is because I was only a 5 year old girl at the time and that I had never witnessed or felt pain in my life before that day, so it was the first time I felt like that and of course it would be that much because of how many fire ants there where.

Epilogue:
      Ever since the incident with the fire ant colony, for years to pass I have always been afraid of all bugs, even if they’re dead I am still scared of them. I won’t go anywhere near them! If they come anywhere near me I scream and run! If there’s a bug floating in the pool I yell for someone to grab the net and get it out. However there are only two bugs in the entire world that I like which are ladybugs and butterflies. I like to see ladybugs and butterflies, but I still scream and run away whenever they fly near me! That is the impact that one incident had on me that has affected me to this day! Which that is a problem too, because I am in JROTC and every Friday we go out on the track and do exercises and stuff and the track is love bug territory!