500 word Essay

The following is a 500 word answer to the college application essay question: "What would your home say, if it could talk?"

   The manufactured house sits on the main road leading out of the small Oregonian town. Not many people ask it what it has to say, but it sits in the rain which seems to last forever, and thinks of its life and the people who have inhabited its framework.

   It knows it is a young house, especially in comparison to some of the ones on the east coast, but it wants to be the subject of public interest too. Unfortunately, it knows that unless a member of its family becomes nationally renown, no-one will try to understand it or the stories it can tell. But if someone would listen, the house would talk...

   It would speak of the six people who have inhabited its halls for the last thirteen years, especially the oldest child, the curious writer boy. It would tell of how the writer boy had always wanted to figure things out. He never played with big trucks as a youngster, but had instead attempted to figure out how they worked and why the wheels turned. Growing up, the writer boy never wanted things easy -- he liked a challenge -- whether it be in sports or in school.

   The writer boy's high school was the most interesting, the house would insist. He swam and played water polo for three years, not giving up even when it was difficult. The house remembers often finding the boy sitting in his room reading long novels others would find boring, or staying up late writing a story which had latched relentlessly onto his mind. At other times, the writer boy participated in the local theater, with his church, or in school-related activities. His family had always encouraged teamwork and the bringing together of every individual's skills to make the final product better than ever. Regardless of where he was, the boy did his best and encouraged the others to do the same. “Nothing comes of laziness, except a guilty feeling when you think of what could have been accomplished,” the boy would say as he attempted to live his life with enthusiasm and integrity.

   Of course the house knows better than anyone else how everything was not as wonderful as the family said. Life was not always easy, such as the summer before the boy's junior year, when his mother tore almost every ligament in her knee and couldn't walk for weeks. Then the following month, the boy and his father were in a car accident where a bicyclist was killed. Even in the hardest of times, the boy did not falter. He adopted holocaust-survivor and psychologist Viktor Frankl's belief that “the meaning of life is found in every moment of living”, regardless of the circumstances.

   As the house recalls its history and wishes to tell someone about it, it watches the writer boy: how he readies for college, takes extra tests, and studies harder than ever, because he knows his strenuous labor will pay off someday. The house believes so too.