Mechanics Descriptive Writing

People are constantly standing up and cheering. There are light-up numbers on a board at each end of the field that increase when the announcer yells “touchdown”. When the numbers change, most of the people in my area either cheer or jeer. I heard one person let out a string of curse words longer than the gas station lines. Such language surprises me. I can’t see the field from where I am at, but I can hear every word the announcers are saying. They use terms I’ve never heard before, like offense, defense, touchdown, and, a frequently used one, quarterback. I remember the hundreds of quarters I’ve seen at the mint all those years back, and throughout my time spent in jars and purses. I picture giant quarters on the field, rolling back and forth with the other players. Why anyone would get excited about that is beyond me.

After the game is over, the cashier dumps a small handful of coins, including me, into his palm, closes his fist, shoves his hands into his pockets, and starts walking.

When the hand opens up, it dumps the coins into a slot in his car, and he drives away. None of the coins are immediately removed from the slot. Every morning driving to work, wherever that is, and every evening coming back the radio was broadcasting on the same station. It’s worse torture than being stuck under a couch for an entire decade. Unlike News Boy, the cashier never walks anywhere; it makes me nervous to think how much money he spends on gas. Slowly, coins are removed from the slot. Now, however, there aren’t mile- long lines at the gas stations. One day, the broadcaster announces that the economy finally seems to be improving. Inflation and unemployment rates were decreasing. Only a few days after, the same broadcaster mentioned an outbreak of a virus called

AIDS.
For several years, the cashier seemed to be more alert and attentive than usual. The outbreak of AIDS must have gotten worse. No one knows the real cause of the virus or how it’s actually spread; they only assume it resides in gay people. Scientists scramble for a cure or even a way to prevent AIDS. The growing fear of AIDS lasts for most of the 1980s and gains massive amounts of media attention. At least 2-3 times a week I listen to a report on new cases of AIDS. It is now 1989, and the cashier turns on the radio in his car to the same station. I prepare for the same spiel about the virus, but the broadcaster says something different, and for once it catches my attention. This time, it was a report on the collapse of a wall in Berlin, Germany.
It’s now 1995. I fall out of the cashier’s car and onto the parking lot in front of a store, but he doesn’t seem to notice. I lay there for about 20 minutes before another car pulls up right beside me, almost running me over. He spends half an hour inside the store, then comes outside, sees me, and picks me up. He examines the date printed on my front side and comments on it, saying its impressive. Instead of being thrown in another slot, my new place is the dashboard. He backs away from the store, then drives for a long time. After a few hours, he announces that we have crossed the border into Oklahoma.
The next day, he drives into Oklahoma City and parks in front of a large, tan building. I wait for him to get out, but he sits in the seat, rifling through some kind of briefcase. I have a decent view of the outside and decide to pass time by watching traffic. None of the vehicles look interesting at all, except for one red pickup truck with a cover on the back, pulling up right in front of the building. The person in my car was too busy with his case to notice. The truck doesn’t do anything for several minutes, and I begin to lose interest in it when a loud explosion happens, causing the driver to drop his briefcase and duck below the steering wheel. Where the red truck used to be is now a burst of flames. The front of the building is in ruins and hundreds of people run. He manages to calm his nerves down enough to start the car and drive away.
After witnessing the explosion, the driver moves from Oklahoma to New York. He spends a month searching for a job after settling into his new apartment and manages to get one at a place called the World Trade Center. Every day I see him in dress pants and a polo shirt. I give him a name: Polo. He never thinks about going back to Oklahoma City, but the explosion never leaves his memory. On some days, he is a little skeptical about going to work, but always ends up shoving out it out of his mind and goes anyway. The news reports another explosion in a park in Atlanta, Georgia; the TV screen shows rubble and smoke. A year after that, another tragic event takes place in Britain: someone named Diana dies in a car accident. This means nothing to me, but the person on TV seems shocked. Polo is also surprised, and I think I see a tear roll down his cheek. In 1999, a shooting takes place at Columbine High School, leaving 13 people dead. He grows even more suspicious about leaving the house.
At New Year’s Eve, Polo throws a party to celebrate the turn of the millennium. The house is crowded with people carrying streamers and wearing headbands made of tinsel. The party reminds me of the ones I witnessed back in the 1920s.
In 2001, I go with Polo inside one of the two looming gray towers and ride an elevator up near the top of the building. The floor consists mostly of office cubicles with a spacious room in the back, labelled “Break Room”. Polo walks to a cubicle and starts to work, while around us, people are typing, walking around, or just having a conversation. He only gets out of the chair to go to the break room for lunch, which requires heating something up in the microwave. When the timer on the side reaches one, a deafening explosion fills the room, and the next thing I know Polo and I are surrounded by smoke. Outside the room, more smoke and flames greet us. Half of the floor is gone, and a massive hole is ripped in one side of the building, like an enormous, poorly cut window. On all fours, Polo crawls to the hole and looks out. The other building is untouched, but the hole in ours cuts into at least fifteen levels. With nowhere else to go, Polo remains there by the hole, listening to the sirens of approaching emergency trucks and the distant shouts from the floors below.
Twenty minutes pass before another explosion occurs in the building next to us. The shouting grows louder, the smoke from the other building wafts into ours, forcing Polo to lay on his stomach. After a few hours, a loud grinding of metal on metal comes from above us, causing the building to shake. For some reason, I feel the absence of solid ground. I fly out of Polo’s pants pocket, outside of the building and falling toward the ground. The world spins; one second, I see the pavement below, the next I look up toward the smoke and flames emitting from the tower. Polo is falling too, only a few feet below me.
I brace myself for the impact. A few minutes after I hit the ground, dust and debris form a pile on top of me. Gradually, invisible hands pull the rubble away, revealing the sky. The two massive towers I saw only a short while ago are completely gone, and there is still no sign of Polo. A police officer comes and picks me up. I live out the rest of the 2000s at a nearby station, listening to the TV and watching people rush to some emergency. In 2007, another school shooting happens in Virginia. The 1990s and 2000s were perhaps the most terrifying years I’ve been through.
The years following 2010 aren’t as intense. I notice a big increase in internet usage and see more cell phones around the station. Over the years, the boxlike computers become narrower, TV’s become wider and have better quality pictures. I watch as cell phones become longer, thinner, and more common. People use something called social media to communicate now. On the news, a big issue is immigration whether or not to decrease the number of legal immigrants coming into the country. The number of school shootings increased. In 2012, one occurs in Sandy Hook Elementary, and another, five years later, in Parkland, Florida.
I leave the station in 2013 and I’m now staying in a house in a suburb community. Someone places me in a little glass bowl filled with other coins, their dates ranging from 1972 to 2018. From the bowl, I watch things change around the house; life seems easier now than it was back in the 1920s. People can communicate by text, become friends with someone halfway around the world, and even ask a little gray cylinder named Alexa to turn the lights on or off. Almost everything is done on a computer or a phone, and they use as little paper as possible. I recall the years I spent with countless owners, under couches, inside pockets, purses, and drawers. I think about how much has changed, like music, methods of communication and transportation, and decide I’ve lived a pretty exciting life. One of the children comes home from school one day saying they have a project due that involves writing about a penny. I hope she chooses me.