Personal Narrative Essay: Switching Channels

Switching Channels
In the blink of an eye your entire life can change drastically. You could be going North at 90 miles an hour and then before you even realize what is happening you are headed South at 180 miles an hour. You never know when something is going to happen and you have no clue what that something could be. Situations pop up in people’s lives all of the time and turn their life around whether it be for the better or for the worse. The situation that really “switched the channel” (Kirszner, 121) of my life was the night that I heard my older sister’s screams coming from our answering machine late at night.
It was almost midnight on a school night during my freshman year of high school and I had just laid down in bed after getting

When I finally found my words I asked what was going on and my mother told me that my sister was in a car accident. When we arrived at the scene all I could see was my sister’s car sideways in the middle of the road with the entire front of it smashed up towards the windshield. As I looked around I saw my sister, emerging from a tan SUV I had never seen before, running towards my parents. The ambulances began to arrive and I was in my sister’s arms when I realized that there was no other damaged car at the

It was about 1:30am and the only people in the Emergency Waiting Room were my mother and I and a couple that looked like they had been there for a while. I sat there staring at the walls that resembled a jail cell for what felt like hours. And that was the particular moment that I realized the channel had been switched forever. I had gone from a girl who had never lost a loved one to a girl who had almost lost her only sister. All I could think of was all of the “what ifs?” What if I had already gone to bed and no one in my family woke up to the answering machine? What if that man didn’t work a late night and someone else with bad intentions got to her first? What if she had been driving a little faster and got knocked unconscious when that deer jumped in front of her car? What if she never woke