The Proudest Moment of My Life

Lately I’ve been working on a lot of application essays, and a question that keeps coming up is, “What is your proudest achievement?” This is the story I wish I could tell.

When I was about 8 or 9, my parents often took my family to Taiwanese Association events. These included cookouts, festivals, culture shows, and general happy times with all the other Taiwanese community members. One weekend, the association set up a big cookout at a nearby park. After a while, as the adults mingled and served us shaved ice, a voice shouted, “Let the watermelon contest begin!”

We all turned on our park benches to look at the field event that had been set up. About thirty feet from the park benches stood a chubby man holding a blindfold, facing the crowd. Between the crowd and the chubby man was a watermelon. “If you can walk to the watermelon and stab it, you get to take it home!” he exclaimed as all the kids began to get in line for the challenge. Being the natural competitor and lover of watermelons (still unaware of my allergy to the damn fruits) that I was, I hopped in line.

The first girl was blindfolded and spun around many times. As she began walking toward the watermelon, she veered off course, heading frighteningly toward the crowd with a knife. She got closer and closer to the crowd, still unaware of her ocean of a distance from the watermelon. Finally, the adults let out a collective laugh when she stepped on the rope demarking the boundaries of the field and stopped. The girl took off her blindfold and realized that the watermelon was about fifteen feet to her left.

 

 

Child after child went on like this. A few succeeded in walking right to the melon and stabbing it, but most others walked to the rope and failed. When it got to be my turn, there was only one watermelon left. “I could be a hero for my family! A breadwinner!” I thought as the chubby man spun me round and round.

Finally, I began to walk in what I thought was the direction of the watermelon. I took slow steps. The crowd was silent except for a few peeps and chuckles. I could sense that I was getting close to the park benches. Getting this watermelon’s gonna be so sweet. With the next step, I felt a rope under my feet. No watermelon. I was devastated.

But then I remembered that the watermelon was sitting on the rope. I just wasn’t sure if it was to my left or right. I took a gamble and started following the rope to the left. Sure enough, ten steps later I heard the glorious clunk of a fresh watermelon, and with a smile on my face, stabbed the melon with my knife. Everyone cheered. It was the proudest moment of my life.

I think the moral of this story is when there’s a watermelon on the line, follow the damn line.