The epic adventures of the children from Braddock Heights

This is an essay I was told to write about something that had happened during my childhood. My most fond memory

Children have an interesting way of looking at life, some of the most memorable experiences as a child can seem the least important when you get older.  Sometimes people lose focus on what use to make them happy, and become overwhelmed on the bitterness in their life.  Once and a while I would find myself forgetting how happy I was when I was younger.  I used to forget the world around me and sail off on an adventure with my friends.  When I look back at those instances I realize how much more alive I felt when I was younger, as compared to the frustrating realities dealt with as an adult.  I distinctly remember a three day event with my friends and I starting on a warm summer’s day ten years ago.  
    Day 1) Seven friends began an epic journey to the far reaches of the Braddock Peninsula.  It all began with a leisurely stroll thru the Braddock Peninsula.  Then we saw it!  The one thing needed to complete our fort; a boat launch/ fishing pier.  (Also known as a piece of dock that had broken off from the marina.)  All we had to do was to get the dock from the beginning of the swamp to the end of the peninsula where are fort was located.  Alicia, Rachel, and Amanda ran to their house, Lauren and Tia ran to theirs, and my sister Christine and I ran to ours.  All seven of us changed into bathing suits and anything we could walk in or use to maneuver around thru the swamp.  Altogether we had two pair of chest waiters, and five pair of rain boots.  Alicia and I were the tallest, so we put on the chest waiters and dragged the dock close to shore.  It was too heavy for all of us to carry to the fort, so the five smaller girls with giant sticks got onto the dock.  We proceeded to move the dock with Alicia pulling it, five girls pushing off the bottom of the swamp with sticks, and myself pushing.  This went on for  two hours.  By then the time was around five PM and time for dinner.  We managed to get the dock to shore thru the cattails, Rachel went and grabbed a rope from our fort, and we tied the dock off for the night.
    Day 2) A storm was coming.  The whole crew could feel the cold breeze.  The storm was going to hit tonight and it was going to hit hard.  We all knew we had a lot of distance to cover before we reached the fort, roughly a quarter mile to go.  (That’s a lot when attempting to pull/push/ and row your way thru a swamp.)  So we headed out with hopes the storm would stay west of us.  Roughly an eighth
of a mile to go, Alicia and I began to sink.  The mud was so thick that our boots where sinking to the point where we couldn’t move.  Alicia and I quickly jumped out of are boots and onto the dock.  But the dock was tipping and swaying so bad we didn’t want the younger girls to go over, so we grabbed are chest waiters from the muck, instructed them to row their way over to us as we ran for shore in are bare
feet.  The younger girls got about ten feet from shore when they as well got stuck.  The dock was too hard to push with just them.  So they attempted to run as Alicia and I helped them by picking them up out of the swamp.  Rachel was so afraid of leaches she refused to run, we finally convinced her to, and I never in my life have seen someone run so fast.  You could swear she was running on water.  That was it, the storm was coming, and we were all on land and a few of us where in the process of burning leaches off our legs.  We all decided to head home for the night and try our luck tomorrow and hopefully find the dock close to shore.
    Day 3) The storm was  bad.  The flood light near the beach was on all night, and we had a power outage.  Around noon the seven of us decided to see where the dock was.  We searched the peninsula on both sides.  Finally Lauren spotted the dock, (what we think was the dock.)  It was on the island in the middle of the bay washed ashore.  YES! We could just borrow Alicia and Rachel’s grandparent’s canoe and go get it and row the dock back.  No such luck on little girls trying to borrow a canoe by themselves to get a dock in the middle of a bay.  We all went inside and played video games for the remainder of the day.
    To this day every at Braddock’s bay remembers those three days.  When I called them up to tell them about I was writing about those three days, they responded with laughter and excitement.  Most of them wanted to go back to when we were young and do it all over again.  Today the old crew is now made up of two military personnel, a stay at home wife, one on her way to becoming a psychologist, a
model, a housekeeper, and one’s in jail.  Although our lives are very different and we have our happy points, none of us would skip the chance to go back to the way life use to be, hanging out in Braddock peninsula, running around and getting into mischief.  The drive for adventure, love of nature, and pursuit of laughter always kept us going.  Those were definitely the good old days.