First, sorry to have not posted for a week. I’ve been busy with school and work. I’ll try not to let it happen again. 
But for any current readers, I’m gonna post a sample of my writing in the form of an essay I wrote a while ago. It garnered a 100%, so I assume it’s not TOO bad. 
The Dawn of a Person
Building a rollercoaster must be a massive undertaking. Making that first plan, hoping that you got your calculations right (else there will be little roller-ing and less coaster-ing), finding a suitable spot to break ground (or risk a falling coaster) and deciding upon a theme, all before ever picking up a power tool. Building a person, on the other hand, is quite a different matter. Sure, it’s just as hard, if not harder. However, it’s a lot easier to get started. The first few feet down the drop can come during a half hour lunch break, or a whole night of passion. Either way, you end up on one heck of a rollercoaster, with all the ups and downs inherent in the nature of the beast. And just like our thrill ride, you can’t stop this one in the middle. There’s just too much momentum.
With that said, there’s not a lot of reason for us to stop this ride. We were planning on it someday, and mom always says to stop procrastinating (though she claims she wasn’t referring to THIS!). So, we’ve buckled in, and we’re ready to see where it takes us. Currently, we’re not even up the first hill. We just had our first ultrasound, and we can still hear the chains pulling us skyward.
Waiting in the office was worse then waiting in line at an amusement park. At least at your local Six Flags you can see the multitudes before you, and have a way to gauge the wait, even if it’s just by number of people getting sunstroke waiting for their turn (2 per hour last time I was there). At the doctor’s office, you walk in, and wait in an empty room for who knows how long. Clearly, not the secretaries, else we would have been scheduled for later.
And it’s not like it’s an easy wait, either. At the theme park, you’re likely with friends, enjoying the experience, without a care in the world (except for the $8 you just spent on a single hotdog & a Pepsi). My mate and I, on the other hand, were stretched thin with worry. We had more thoughts milling around in our head then customers waiting in queue for Superman: Ride of Steel: Concern for the baby’s health, worry for Deanna’s safety, not to mention when we can learn the gender of our little bundle of love. And on top of many more thoughts cavorting around in our heads was an overriding anticipation of seeing OUR baby for the very first time.
But, just like at Six Flags, after the waiting is over and you get called into that special group known as the “Next Up’s” and you’re loaded, locked, and given verbal waivers, it’s all fun from there. In our case, we were called in with a subdued “Deanna? Marvin? You can come in now” by the nurse. After we filed into the room, the nurse had Deanna strip down for the ultra sound, and hop up onto the examination table (which is a bad thing: she hates the stirrups). And then the doctor came in and went to work, and let me tell you: it was pure, unrestricted nirvana from there on out.
Never before have I experienced the simple brilliance of watching something that I helped create move of its own volition. A child encased in a veritable sea of amniotic fluid, moving to the subtle rhythms of life at that most primordial stage. Nothing is more perfect, more astounding then that most precious thing.
This is a feeling that, try as I may, I can not seem to convey to my non-expecting friends. Nor is it easy to tell someone with no experience with a ‘coaster just how much thrill is to be had by seemingly putting your life in peril. Imagine, if you will, that for the space of ten whole minutes your entire universe, sun, moon, stars, heaven and earth, revolves around a tiny wisp on a black and white screen. And, at that same time, around a minute body, not the size of a thimble, in the very core of your expecting life-mate. The second hand by which your world keeps time is dictated by the rapid pumping of its dust sized heart. These seconds expand to minutes, and minutes to seem like hours as you sit by, awed by the deceptively simple act of it twitching its future arms. You get both the first big downhill thrill of the ride to come, and at the same time, it’s as if it’s just a prelude: the ‘coaster roaring by overhead as you wait in line for the main event.
There is no more exciting journey I can think of then the one we’re beginning now: The quest to create life, and foster it as it matures. For the next 18 years we’ll be walking a tight rope fraught with overprotection on one side, and negligence on the other. And then to watch, and giggle, and prepare to spoil rotten the life that it itself begets. Perhaps we’ll take our grandchild to Six Flags 2029. Or, perhaps we won’t. Either way, we have to get over the first drop before we can enjoy the loop-de-loops and the corkscrews. Let alone the second ride.
