Last summer during the lockdown, I spent a lot of my time cooking with my mom. I learnt how to cook many dishes, including chicken noodle soup, spaghetti, and fried noodles. But, I believe that the most memorable dish I learnt was cooking Bouillabaisse, a French tomato based seafood soup. And, the reason why it is memorable isn’t what you would expect…

At first, I didn’t notice. I just thought that the tomato was giving off some weird juice-sunset ruby red. I was about to turn around and tell my mom when I suddenly realised: It wasn’t the tomato! It was MY FINGER! I cautiously told my mother, whose face was as pale as a piece of paper.

“Eleanor”, she said slowly, “how did you cut your finger?”

“I was cutting the tomatoes. They are so slippery.”

“Did you put the tomato upside down so that the flat part is on the cutting board like I told you to?”

“No...”

I could tell that my mom was angry at me, but she didn’t show it. Instead, she took me to the bathroom, and wrapped up my cut with a bandage. So, while the soup bubbled and laughed on the stove top, I was sitting glumly on the sofa, reading. The soup was delicious, the tomato broth was light, the seafood soft and fresh, and there was absolutely not a taste of blood in the soup. I promise! Even my dad couldn’t tell that I had cut my finger until my mom and I told him the whole story. The next day, she told me that she forgave me (and don’t worry, she didn’t end up fainting from the blood). But I had a feeling she wasn’t going to let me into the kitchen for a month.

In the dressing room, I was nervous and excited. Of course, I expected to lose against our A1 team, but fears of losing by more than ten filled my head. That was even before I got on the ice.

Coach Mach said, “What’s the most important thing today?”

I blurted, “D-zone.”

Mach said, “Correct.”

We went to the warmup. We ran, and when we changed and stepped on the ice, I had a feeling of relief. I had waited an hour to get on the ice.

*****

I was indignant at the goalie, Connor. I wanted to say that he was horrible. He didn’t block the obvious shots. My excitement died away, still nervous. I was standing on one knee. At the bench, I felt that my teammates felt the same. I knew each of them was mad at a different person.

Mach said, “What are we doing? Why is F2 going down to F1 and D1? Wingers, we need to keep our positions. D1 and F1. Have your man and fight. D2, find a guy and lift their stick.”

Coach Bill said, “This period is a new game, 0-0.”

The buzzer rang. The second period started.

*****

I felt determined… to say the forwards were horrible. I thought we knew that we were going to lose, and we should play defensively. I wanted to say that the defence was bad too. I wanted to shout that everyone was bad, and so we were losing.

Mach said, “Now I don’t care if we win. We NEED to just work harder than them.”

The buzzer rang. The third period started.

*****

After the game, I was livid. I was so tired in the dressing room. I did my part. They didn’t. I felt everyone would feel they were wrong. That’s before I saw that we were in a good mood, blaming each other. Still, I could do better. Two goals were my fault. But my feelings persisted. They were not as good. Then, Mach came in. The room fell silent.

Mach wrote HUNT. “What’s here?” he asked.

We said, “Hunt.”

Mach nodded.

It was a new day of school for me at a new school. I had just transferred from my other school that was too far from my house. The new school’s name was Uhill and it was really close to my house. At my old school and at home, I didn’t read that much. I could read but why would I when I could watch TV instead?

In my new school, we had library class each week. The librarian's name was Jordan, he was amiable and encouraged everyone to read books.

Every day I would come a bit early and go to the library to borrow some books. It became a daily school habit, I was borrowing at least one book each day to immerse myself in.

One morning, after I had continued coming to the library many weeks in a row, Jordan said, “Teresa, you are my number one customer for coming here so many times!”

And I replied, “Thanks, I will keep coming!”

Whenever I needed a new book, Jordan patiently walked me through all of the books that I could be interested in. It was as if he had drawn a map of the library and could recite the location of every book backwards.

Day by day, my reading ability increased, I began reading more complicated longer books. I felt like I was studying, enjoying and actually achieving something by having fun!

In the school, the library was amazing, not because it had countless books, a lot of space or anything like that, but because it had a very encouraging librarian. The library was a delightful place for me to indulge myself in the magical world of books, whether it was fantasy or Robert Munsch or mystery.

Many people contributed to my love of books and all of the support built up like fireworks. Jordan was the person who made them explode.

You know, some people are afraid of commas, which I get, but semicolons are even worse! What I fear most are semicolons. Yup, the period and the comma. My main reason is because the comma has a sidekick: the period. They are kind of like Batman and Robin.

In my theory, the period gets trained by the comma and they fight together. My calculations say that semicolons are 2.7 times more dangerous than commas and are getting more and more dangerous every second; when the period finishes it’s training, it trains FIVE commas and the commas choose certain periods to train, and it goes on, and on, and on.

And where are semicolons used, you ask? You use a semicolon to join two related independent clauses in place of a comma and a coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet). You HAVE to make sure when you use a semicolon that the connection between the two independent clauses is clear without the coordinating conjunction. Or else?

Well, now I’ll tell you a story. It all started when I had finished a piece of writing. I went down for dinner, but when I came back I saw that there were many BIG red semicolons in the WRONG places on my piece of paper.

From then on, I had nightmares about them. One of my nightmares was that there was a war between punctuation marks and humans, And the punctuation marks were winning. Picture this: an army of semicolons marching furiously with their weapons, waiting for the humans to attack. And at school, I told my friends about my fear, and of course, they didn’t believe me. But after a few stories they were too scared to sleep. Oh, and my sister, she was scared to be in a room by herself! And if I die (from Semicolons) please pass this story on and on.

What it feels like to be the only child in my family Do you have siblings? Can you imagine if you’re the only child in your family? I’m the only child in my family. That can be good and bad. When you are the only child your sibling won’t bother you while you’re reading books or playing with your friends. They won’t steal your favorite toy or mess around with your books. You’re completely alone at home. You can do anything secret that you don’t want anybody to know. One time, I was writing a story that I’m not sure was great enough. I didn’t want anyone to see my story. But if my sibling had barged into my room, then they would have read my story and embarrassed me. It is only sometimes fun being an only child though. If you have no sibling, then you will be bored when you have nothing to do. A sibling will keep you busy because two kids can have lots of fun ideas and games playing together. I remembered when I was young, I was so bored that I lay on the sofa and imagined what it would be like if I had a sibling. All the bad thoughts about having a sibling just raced out of my mind. My imaginary sibling is an older sister who is kind and likes to play with me every day. She usually chases me around the house; we play chess or “Monopoly” after school. So much fun!! But my mom said it’s impossible for me to have a big sister because I’m her first child. I was very disappointed when she told me that. Then I accepted it when I was older. Now, I’m used to being the only child in my family. I’m used to being bored; whenever I feel bored I’ll read a book. So now you know the good and bad of being an only child. If you have a sibling, when they bother you, just try to ignore them and pretend you’re the only child. If you’re the only child, like me, then pretend you have an imaginary sibling when you’re bored.