Gabe Wright

When I was seven years old, I lived in the city of Syracuse, New York. This is where I was born and all I had ever known. Until one day, in August of 2007, when my parents told my sister and me that we were moving to Virginia. I was excited, but other than a rush of adrenaline, I didn’t know what it meant to move from state to state. I know it was hard on my mom because all of her family is in New York. I knew that we were all about to begin a new chapter of our lives.

“Don’t leave any place unchecked,” my mom said to us as we were all packing. My mother is kind of a control freak when it comes to packing and cleaning. If it did not go just as she had pictured it in her mind, it had to change. We got used to it though. We got the house packed up in a matter of a week. We later found out that packing the entire house up in a week was not the best way to go about it since we had a few days until the moving truck came.

When the moving truck came on October 19, we were ready and waiting with the front door open and the boxes ready to be loaded onto the big truck. I was excited because when we cleaned out the front closet, I had discovered a Christmas present from the preceding year that my parents had forgot about. It was a Star Wars themed LEGO set. I built that thing in less than ten minutes, and I was extremely happy. “He’s just like Alex,” I remember my dad saying, referring to my older brother Alex who was in college at the time.

We started the drive to Virginia early the next morning. All in all, the drive was like a slip n’ slide; fast and fun while it lasted. The time it takes to get to Roanoke from Syracuse, on average, is about10 hours. We made it in eight. I don’t remember much about the ride down, probably because I was sleeping. Although I do remember one thing, the Burger King Burger I had when we stopped for lunch. It was the best tasting burger that had ever hit my seven year old taste buds. It makes me laugh, because now I find it repulsive. A peanut butter and hair sandwich would be more appetizing than that was.

When I look back on my moving experience and what my life would be like if we still lived in New York, I realize that it was for the better that we moved here. Everything happens for a reason, even if it doesn’t seem that way at first. Usually it’s for the better and you should try and make the best out of the situation. If you learn to make the best out of what’s in front of you, you will live a prosperous life.