Possible Memoir Topics with Sketches

Swimming With No Strength

One of the most influential times of my life was in the summer of 2006 when I went on a mission trip to the devastated city of New Orleans. The entire experience there was one that my mind will never let go of. One event in particular was when we drove to the Gulf of Mexico to clean up some of the shoreline houses and debris in the area. After we completed the clean up process, we were able to spend some time on the beach and enjoy the beautiful vast waters in front of us.

Some friends and I spotted a nice size rock formation that was, to our eyes, not that far from shore. We decided we would like to swim out there to the rocks for fun. One of the guys went to go ask Jason, our youth minister, if we could go. The guy came back and said that Jason gave us the okay.

Slippery Trail

The summer of 2006 was a very important time in my life. I had just finished Junior year of high school and so I was on my way to the biggest year of my general education career, Senior year. I had just received salvation from Jesus Christ right before summer had started. As a result of Senior year approaching and being filled with some much love because of my acceptance of Christ, I wanted to start growing into a God’s man, which is something completely different from an Earthy man. I decided to go on my first youth church camp. The experience of growing closer to God while being surround with other Christians that I adored was amazing. I had meet a couple of people on the mission trip that I went on before camp, that has ended up being some of my best friends. They decided to attend church camp too. We hung out a great deal of the time there and grew close together as friends and also brothers and sisters in Christ.

One of these moments of us together became a eye-opening experience that changed the way I looked at God. We decided because it was a beautiful day out after it had been raining in the morning that we would walk one of the many trails at camp.

Easter Sunday Revelation

During my Junior year of high school, I met this girl that would change my life in extreme ways. The most important way was also one of the happiest times of my life. She invited me to this concert that her church was having in March. I had such an awesome time that I was more than happy to accept her invitation to Easter Sunday at the same church in just a few weeks. My mother went on a cruise during that weekend of Easter Sunday so I went with just my friend and her family. I had not attended church in a very long time and the only times that I did was on special holiday, such as Christmas and Easter. When I walked into the church, I was shocked at how enormous the sanctuary was. I was a little intimidated by the size of the congregation because my family had only visited somewhat small churches since 1997 when we left our old church because of some leadership problems. 

Memoir Response

            After reading “Us and Them”, the title seemed to suit the story extremely well. The Sedaris family was extremely weird in how they dealt with people. I was feeling somewhat awkward, when reading the part of story when the Tomkey family came over to the house for candy. I felt sorry for the Tomkey family because of how the Sedaris family acted and how that could have made them felt. They must have already felt bad by going house to house the day after Halloween and then the Sedaris family must have created even more uncomfortable feelings. David Sedaris was just like any other kid around his age: selfish, mean, and curious. Any kid that just received or ‘earned’ a bag of candy the night before would almost never give some of it up to someone else. Their parents would have to step in and push them to do the right thing if they never have taught them that beforehand. I can relate to David in a way, because I was very curious when I was younger and somewhat selfish but not anywhere near as bad as David.

            The memoir called “Mick Jagger Wants Me” by Susan Gilman is very relatable. It tells a pretty realistic story of teenagers with this idea of meeting a famous person that they have basically fallen in love with. When I was in late middle school and early high school, a television show called American Dreams was on. I had ‘fallen in love’ with the character Meg Pryor, who was around my age and going through all these awesome experience with her friend. Mostly what caught my heart and thoughts was how she acted with guys and just her overall personality. I wanted a girl like her in real life. I don’t think I would ever meet Brittany Snow, which is the actress who played Meg, but Im not sure if I actually ever truly wanted to. Most likely how Susan dealt with the situation of about to meet the apple of her eye, I would probably have done the same. It would make things awkward for both me and her and would probably ruin the fantasy that I have always wanted.