Click, photo of a frozen second in time. Snapshot of a moment in my life. Ah…..Memories. Everyone experiences different things that all have sentimental value; maybe it was the first time on a bike, or just the twentieth time walking to school, or even going swimming in the Dead Sea. What can I say? There are too many things in my life that I can possibly say that bring smiles and tears to my eyes whenever they come up. There was the time when I ran across the room not knowing that the floor was just mopped and slid face first into the wall. Or the rough accident of when I slipped off my toboggan and tumbled right after it, landing in a mountain of snow. Or the humiliation of when my hands slipped from the rings when I was swinging mid-way and ended up free-falling and face planting into a pile of sand. Or that one awkward time when I called my teacher mommy. Or the embarrassment of when I was having a heated conversation with my sister and turned my back around to go on another rampage, to then realize that she had left halfway through the argument; to everyone around me, I was basically yelling at open air. All those moments, from the laughter to the pain, they are forever engraved in my mind.

As a young child of seven, we went on our annual trips to Blue Mountain to of course, ski. We happily loaded onto the ski lift, with me aside my sister. I was giddy with excitement and oblivious little mdidn't’t realize that there was a mark at where you were supposed to step off. I slipped off about two metres behind and tangled my skis along the way. It was bad enough that when I had stepped off, I had hit the snow face-first, but by then my eyes were blurred, I couldn’t stand, and my hands were too numb to push myself up. I crouched there like a sitting duck, bowing my head to make sure that no ski lifts would hit me. Unfortunately, I was too oblivious to realize that every time that I had ducked my head, no ski lifts would pass by, but every time I had looked up, the lifts would smack me in the head. The thought that probably hasn’t hit you is where is the help? Why isn’t anyone there for her? What happened to her sister? You see, as a small child, I was hidden by the snow mounds from the controller; he could not stop the machine because hdidn't’t see me in distress. My sister was being responsible from the start. She had stepped off at the right spot, and was guilty of kicking me in the side of the head while she was at it. She stood at the safe point with a gaping mouth while she pointed and cracked up barely taking a breath. At that moment, I remember myself thinking,” why me!” And,“ I wanna go home!” Luckily, my mother was a few seats back, so when she started to come towards me, instead of stepping off at the mark, she continued on the course back. The controller finally stopped the lifts so my mother could get off when he saw me. What a sight I would have been, me bawling my eyes out in a pile of snow and tangled skis. A true mess.

To me, every moment counts. Every second passed is a blessing, a gift. Through all the tough times and all the smooth rides, memories can be relived no matter how small they are. Everything is special whether it is as simple as finding a penny on a ground, or something big like graduating from elementary school.