The Exchange Student :: Personal Narrative Writing

The Exchange Student I remember when Camy came to live with our family for a year. It seemed my mother had been pestering me for months about the idea of hosting an AFS student. Long before she even crossed the Atlantic from Italy on an airplane, Camy entered the daily conversations and thoughts of my mother. To be precise, I believe it was April of my junior year in high school. "Do we have to talk about this now?" I kept asking, wanting to push the idea into some sort of vacuum that sucked it to the back of my mind. "You’ll love her," my mom said. "We’ve heard such good things about her from the Mudge family. They hosted her cousin Checo." "I hate how you always try to make me do things," I said, slightly raising the level of my voice. "Eric, now you know I’ve never made you do anything you didn’t want to do." I was ready for her though. "Oh yeah, what about the horseback riding lessons in first grade that I had to take?" I said, recalling the image of the seven-year-old perched on top of a brown pony with the reigns in hand, as the over-sized riding helmet slid from his forehead down over his eyes. I stopped those lessons as soon as my instructor told me the next step was learning the gallop. "And what about the swimming lessons with that awful lady who made me put my face in the water and count to ten." This time I saw my instructor, sitting by the edge of the pool, her navy swimsuit fit snugly to her body, spreading out the excess flab of her pale thighs. I remember looking at her the instant before I went under, hoping she would give me a last second reprieve from my face plunging exercise. Instead, all I saw was her wide grin, and all I heard was the lapping of the pool water against its sides. "Oh Eric," my mom said. "You’re really impossible some times." "Thanks mom, thanks," I said. And with that, I had managed to put the decision on hold one more time. That is, until my father brought it up at the dinner table a month later. I’m sure we were having my dad’s legendary spaghetti and sauce the night they picked Camy. I often wonder if my father had truly planned pasta night because he wanted to discuss an Italian girl coming to live with us for a year.