Ice cream has always been my comfort food. I think I get it from my mother who also loves ice cream. Other kids would choose candy, cake, or cookies, but I have always wanted ice cream. I eat it when I am happy, when I am sad, when it is cold and when it is hot. It is what I eat when I work through things. I know it is a cliché that ice cream makes everything better, but it always makes me feel happy. There is something magical about the mixture of sugar and milk frozen into an ice cream mix. One of my favorite things to do in the summer is to make ice cream.This summer, ice cream was a way to celebrate life with my old friends while grieving the life of a young student. We were almost half way through the summer, still at the fun part before school started, when a tragedy occurred in my town. A 6th grade student who went to my old school committed suicide. My previous school is a small public school with only 300 students K-12. The school is like a family to many people, everyone knows everyone else. Every morning when we walked in the door our principle would stand in front saying “I love you all.” He was trying to make school a happy and safe place for student who didn’t have that at home.
This tragedy ensued after being dumped by her boyfriend and bullied online by girls from another school. The young girl, Kasey placed a suicide note on Facebook and committed suicide. One of the worst things is that people liked her status, not understanding what it meant. The entire town was shocked and devastated after this happened. The day after, my town held a candle light ceremony in the memory of her life. Her family was there and the town came to support. We stood in a circle talking about the memories we had of her, with the glowing light of flickering candles all around. While I was not close to the young girl, the tragedy of her death effected the entire community.
As the school nurse spoke she talked not just about her, but she said “let this light represent the light inside you do not let it extinguish. You must let your light shine bright for Kasey and enjoy what she cannot.” Looking around I saw her family, friends and members of the community there to support, and show how much she was loved. At the ceremony I stood with old friends most I had known since kindergarten. After the ceremony I wanted to celebrate Kasey in the best way I could think of - going out for ice cream with friends. I decided we did not want to be alone. We wanted to do what the nurse said and enjoy a little thing in life, ice cream in her honor.
We drove to a local ice cream shop a few miles away. It was just about to close, but they still served us. As my friends and I sat outside on the picnic bench eating our ice cream and watching the cars drive by, I started to think about the different ice cream flavors and how a different ice cream flavor could resemble a memory or mood. When I am sad, I enjoy eating cookies and cream it has a nice combination of ice cream and cookies. That night I had cheese cake flavored ice cream. In the ice cream there were chunks of what I think was cheese cake. When I have cheese cake ice cream I hope to be reminded of Kasey and the memory of her life.
Some names have been changed.
Work Cited:
http://www.free-extras.com/images/ice_cream_cone-2230.htm
10/03/11
Your first paragraph is very attractive, and I love the image of ice cream being the mixture of sugar and milk. But then the paragraphs after that is very different from what I expected-- ice cream is not mentioned until the last paragraph, I liked the ending. However, I think you can shorten the story and be more descriptive about how ice cream makes you feel better and get through the incident, and also how different flavors ice cream make you feel differently.
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