Believe it or Not.

This assignment was "Believe it or Not," the point of the speech was to take a normal story and exaggerate it to the point where the audience didn't know whether or not it was true. The story could either be 100% true, or 100% false, or anywhere in between. The story I chose was one that I thought could easily be interpreted as false. While writing it I didn't want to make it easy for the audience to think that it was false, and at the same time I wanted to keep it as true as possible, but instill a bit of doubt into the audience's minds. When I read the speech in front of the class it became much more difficult than I thought it would be. By the end of the speech my mouth was extremely dry and both my hands were shaking a lot. While writing it I did have to take some breaks due to stress, but when speaking it aloud it was much more difficult than expected.





Screaming his name she ran towards him, his now flailing body splashed into the water and was overtaken by the rolling log. She desperately clambered through the 4 foot deep water and watched as he was crushed. She continued screaming and saw the log bounce with an ineffable force on what was presumably his body. Falling into the water she screamed and desperately searched the floor for any trace of her husband. The heavy current pushed against her body, forcing her downward as if trying to drown both people at the same time. On the other side of the log she heard her husband screaming the words “I’m going to die! I’m going to die!”Realizing that he was not under the log she looked over the top to see her husband holding on for dear life to the very object that had just ensured his death. She reached over and grabbed his arms, now with the 3,000 pound log separating them. He could not see a thing; his only senses were devoted to the sound around him, and his unbearable pain that surged through his body. He screamed that he couldn’t see, and that he was going to die, while she maneuvered the twelve foot long log out from in between them. He lost consciousness, his limp body was only held onto the log by the woman’s firm grip. Finally the log was pushed out from in between them and his dead weight dragged the woman down into the water. She stood up, carrying them both through the current, and slipped on a rock sending both of them into the creek. Losing her grip when she fell, the man’s unconscious body floated with the current downstream. She dove and once again he was saved by his wife. Dragging his floating body behind her, she finally managed to get him to the shore. She pulled his shoulders onto the shore and ran to the other side of his body in an attempt to place his legs on dry land. While she ran, he slid down into the water and out of sight once again. She scrambled to find his submerged body, as it moved silently in an unknown direction. By taking hold of his shoulder, she pulled him once again onto the land, onto safety.

Breathless, she confronted her two youngest children, who had just watched their father be crushed by a 3,000 pound log. The two four year olds stared at their dying father, seeming as if they didn’t know the true amount of damage that had been inflicted, when really they knew exactly how bad it was, and knew exactly what was going to happen. The woman now had to make a choice, she had been married to this man for 24 years, would she stay with him in his last painful moments? Or would she find help, leaving her two four year old children to possibly watch their father die?

…
She told them to stay where they were, to not touch their father, and to wait until she got back. She climbed up a sheer cliff, covered with blackberries knowing that with every second she let pass, her husband slipped farther away from life. Slipping on mud, and landing in piles of blackberries, she carried on with the prayer that she would be able to call for help. And the man, he could not breathe, he could not see, pain surged through every pore in his body and he had no choice but to remain motionless. My mother, cut, bleeding and panicked praying that somehow, she would see her husband again. My siblings, watching in horror as his life slowly moved away from them. And my father, laying on frozen rocks with death breathing down his neck, waiting for the opportune moment to remove him from all of our lives.

The phone rang, and again. I tried to press the pause button, it didn’t work. “C’mon you… fine.” Leaving the movie running, I picked up the phone with an unmotivated “hello?” My mother yelled into the phone
“Dusty, there’s been an accident, the 911 is on its way, you have to meet them and take them here.”
“Wait, what? What’s going on? Where are you?”
“I can’t explain now, just you have to go, go up… past the tree of five. Just go up. It’s dad, he… Just walk up to us.”
“Ok, look I don’t understand, I am going to walk upstream until I find you right?”
“Yeah, that’s right”
“Ok, I will see you in a little bit”
I heard the phone click, and put on my shoes in complete confusion. With every step I took out to the driveway, my disbelief amplified. Five minutes of fear, and confusion seemed like 3 hours, I waited for the ambulance, giving me time to think about what was just said to me. The words “There’s been an accident, It’s dad he…” rang over and over in my ears. I contemplated what she truly meant when she-the siren blew in my ear. And what was going on really dawned on me at that point that something was very wrong. The paramedics questioned me as we walked to my parents and I repeatedly had to tell them “I know as much as you do.” After ¾ of a mile walking, we finally reached the place where my family waited. My two siblings were standing, alone, and my father’s head was resting in my mother’s lap. Both of my parents’ faces were whiter than I have ever seen any person. One was white from fear, and the other was white from lack of life. The paramedics took a pair of scissors and quickly sliced his clothes of. The jeans now like paper fell limply to the ground. Everything from this point on becomes blurry in my memory. People debating over whether or not to use a helicopter, people interrogating my father about his pain, interrogating my mother about what happened, watching my father in unbearable pain, seeing his face cringe, hearing him vocalize his agony. It was too much for me to handle, and I picked up my 4 year old sister, held the hand of my brother, and began to walk back to our house. I tried to contemplate what had happened within the last half hour, and could not even begin to contemplate what was going to happen within the next six weeks. I opened the door to our house, I heard a noise coming from one of the rooms, as I walked in I noticed that the movie was still playing. I tried once again to stop it, and after futile attempts, I threw the remote down and watched the credits roll up the screen. I watched the end, what seemed like the end of everything.