Ali's Cowbird Story

I want to take some time and introduce this next piece.

I wrote The Cowbird Story when I was a freshmen in Highschool. This was the first real piece of literature I produced that had a clear path to finding my voice. I grew up writing songs and poems, however, this short one page essay stood out to everyone, including my teacher. She pulled me aside and assured me that whatever I did, with practice to do it well, I could have a successful future using my creative side. Whatever that may mean for me throughout life, I never had that kind of support before. So, I kept going and I'm thankful for the reassurance and push my teacher had-my Highschool in general was great like that. I hope you enjoy it!

Revelation.

He was a tall slender man; bald as a man's unshaved face after five days. He walks past the house where I used to live on Orangewood Drive. The neighborhood was always quite, never would have thought murderers, thieves, or thugs would have lived in this stretch of town. He used to live around the corner from me, on the corner where a house was all like “Christmas Vacation” my friend’s mom would say every time we drove by it.

Before driving by this house we would drive by a kind of smaller house, the house where the tall, slender man lived. In my front yard I had a big lemon tree; all the lemons looked like limes out of the nine months in the year when not ripe. But when it turns Spring or a little bit before then, that delicious smell of golden citrus, the yellow scented smell of lemons would be in the air. I remember harvesting them all too well and somehow I would sweat when the weather outside is not even hot. Arizona is known for being really hot in the summer, but around winter, you ask yourself “am I still in Arizona?” During this time every so often this group of young men would walk by and take our lemons off the tree. Noises of them laughing and talking. One day I thought I heard “Jare, get one!” and saw a hustle of feet moving when I was feeling the cool winter wind hit my face through my bedroom window, which had a clear shot of my front yard. My mom didn’t mind them taking the lemons, but she did mind when they wouldn’t ask and after a while a guy did come to our door and ask, but he looked different from the guys before. Not the same tall man who would walk by my house on his way to the near by park, I'm assuming. It belonged to a school where he used to attend-way back when-I later found out. All these memories. I didn’t think these littles things meant much for it was back in 2009 when I experienced them. Only a short two years later all the pieces unraveled on January 8th, 2011 when the guy I used to see and thought of as a lemon stealer shot Gabrielle Giffords. I have lived in this neighborhood for about seven years and never would I have guessed this guy was “dangerous”. I think I might have even said “Hi” to him on one of my friendliest days.

“We have reported that a guy named Jared Loughner shot Gabrielle Giffords earlier this morning in-front of a Safeway during one of her speeches. He is trying to run on foot and cops are circling the area.”

I heard the TV in my mom’s room when I was brushing my hair, I stopped dead in mid brush and ran in the room. A mugshot of the guy who did it was on the screen, I felt sick to my stomach, but a strange feeling of familiarness went over me. Where have I seen this guy before? Course the memory was slightly vague, and of course he looks different. But the flashback where I heard a guy say “Jare get one” as the months went on was coming back to me and when the realization set in, it was kind of scary. Ever since that day my mom occasionally reminded me that if we knew Gabrielle Giffords was in town we would have been there, we could have gotten shot and better yet, by the guy who used to steal our lemons.