An Essay on Everest

(Please note cover image from free clipart - families climbing)

(True story about yours truly)

Many moons ago when I was about seven or eight years old, I went to a local catholic primary school taught by both Nuns and lay people (non-nuns). The year was broken up into three terms and at the beginning of each term our teacher would ask each pupil to stand at the front of the class and regale the rest with what they did during the holidays. 

For my brother and me, holidays consisted mainly of watching the odd movie in town, playing with toys, reading comics and viewing whatever rubbish they had on television. Apart from that we went to the park every now and if the weather was okay our parents would take us on picnics.

Somehow the other kids always seemed to have far more exciting adventures and antics to share, making my stories appear to attract less interest. I got sick of this and started suspecting that they were merely making up these tales just to impress the class so it seemed, at the time that the obvious solution would be to spice my holiday antics up with a few white lies, or at least exaggerations.

So the very next chance I got I concocted a story that I thought would be interesting. Unfortunately I made it a little too interesting and found myself getting into a bit of trouble for it. It came in the form of an essay entitled “What I did during the holidays”. I’m sure you’ve all had to write one of those. Mine regaled the story of how my family and I climbed Mount Everest along with our grandfather (despite the grandparents of both my Mother and Father having long ago passed away).

In essence it told the tale how we climbed the mountain one afternoon, stayed the night (I think, or perhaps we did it as a day walk, I can’t remember as I have sadly lost the original essay) stopping halfway up for a rest. I clearly remember drawing an illustration of my brother and I playing on the swings in a park half way up the mountain whilst our parents and Granddad had a rest.

Well, as you can imagine this got their attention and they were completely enthralled in the story, especially the teacher, who for some reason seemed to have a slight suspicion I was making the whole lot of it up. To tell the truth, back then I had no idea where Mount Everest was and only mentioned the name because our parents had told us about Sir Edmund Hillary’s famous climb. I also had no idea just how high it really was, or impossible for two adults a pair of very young children and a fictitious grandparent to climb in one afternoon.

The barrage of questions became a little too much to bear and I found myself getting tongue tied trying to explain the route we took, but I could not bring myself to admit I had made it all up.

Finally threatened with the choice of either coming clean or having the teacher ring my parents for confirmation of the climb and despite getting my palms swatted with a ruler, as punishment for lying to everyone, it was a relief to have such a weight off my shoulders.

The teacher kindly smoothed it over with the rest of the class and even gave me a good mark on my essay for being so imaginative.

That was probably the first time I ever wrote anything that had any impact on anyone and perhaps what started my interest in writing.

{Just thought I would share.}