A Critical Situation in a Train - Essay Example

Describing and Remembering Describing an event may have different characteristics in different languages whereas remembering an incident or information may have common elements even for people of different culture or country. Remembering of an incident or story depends on how deeply the description influenced a person. Nobody will keep casual descriptions or friendly talks in memory even if the subject was so important whereas even less important topics will be kept in memory if the description is interesting. Habitual patterns of language use may bias memory: speakers who describe causal events differently remember causal events differently (Oops! Describing and remembering accidental agents in English, Spanish and Japanese). I am a 23 years old Korean woman and an international student in Indiana. I have five members in my family in Korea; Father, mother, younger brother, sister and I). This paper describes one of my terrible childhood incidents in which my family and friends faced a critical situation while traveling in a train. A terrible incident happened in my train journey during my childhood My father was a government employee who was forced to spend only his two month holidays in a year with us because of his professional commitments at a distant place from my home. When he comes home on holidays, usually we celebrate his arrival with a variety of travel packages across Korea. Site seeing was a favorite hobby for all of us and we always wait eagerly for the holidays of my father in order to visit different places in Korea. One of our neighboring families also joined us most of the times while we tour other places. I had an intimate friend in that family who was studying with me in one of the primary schools nearer to our home. It was in 1998, when I was around 11 years old; we planned to visit a place around 500 Kilometers away from our home by train. Our neighboring family also joined us in that journey. On a Sunday evening we have started our journey so that we could reach our destination by the Monday morning. All of us were in a pleasant mood and we enjoyed some of the delicious Korean foods as our dinner in that Sunday from a restaurant before entering the train. It was a kind of chicken fry similar to the Kentucky fired chicken. The restaurant supplier served the food after reheating it again in the oven in order to avoid freshness of the food. The smell of the chicken penetrated through the noses of all of us and when the supplier served it, we kids had full of saliva in our mouth. Everybody attacked the plate quickly so that they finished their dinner within a minute or two. Unfortunately, I couldn’t enjoy that food much because it was too spicy. We entered the train by around 8 pm. Even though, I and my friend have enjoyed the beauty of the natural sceneries through the windows of the train for around two hours. The blistering sound produced by the train engine was a pleasant one for me. The rhythm of the engine sound and the occasional whistle from the driver’s cabin attracted me very much. As it was night, not many other sounds were heard during that time apart from the sound produced by our train. The train occasionally stopped in some of the railway stations and again continued its journey. Our train passed through heavily populated areas occasionally; but majority of the journey was through jungles and my dad told us that some of the forests through which our train passes have robbers who attack the trains occasionally and loot the money from the passengers. He has told us that a month before, some of the robbers attacked a train and stolen money from many of the passengers. The story was frightening and all of us prayed to the God in order to protect us from the attacks of the robbers. By around, 12’O clock most of us started to sleep and I also became tired and made preparations for my sleep. My dad and mum asked me to stop watching the thick and dark forest as nothing were visible in the forest. I lay on the bed and tried to sleep as most of the others were already started to sleep. After some time, the train slowly came to rest and there were no sign of a platform or a railway station. Nothing was visible outside and the passengers inside our cabin started to talk each other about the unusual stoppage of the train. Some of the passengers told that the place where we stopped was nearer to the place where the robbers attacked and robbed another train in the last month after forcing the driver for an emergency stoppage of that train. My father started to talk with other passengers about the possible problems the train might have faced. I was eagerly listening the talks inside the cabin even though, I pretend like sleeping. The thoughts about a possible robbery and attack by the robbers started to haunt me. My body started to shiver with fear. One of the passengers instructed others that the doors should not be opened under any circumstances until the train resumes its journey and leaves that place. Everybody started to suggest the reasons for the unexpected stoppage based on their own imagination and creativity; finally another passenger confirmed that the engine failure caused the train to stop in that place and at least an hour might be required for the substitute engine to come from the nearest railway station. The thought of spending an hour inside the dark forest and that also under the threat from the robbers started to agitate many of us even though nobody shown any signs of fear or anxiety externally. The time was ticking away and the agony among the passengers started to develop frightful proportions. We have heard the whistle of another train coming from the opposite side and within minutes, it crossed our train with a cracking sound. Two more trains passed our train and the time crossed 12.30, 1, 1.30 and the agony and discomfort started to grow again and again. By around 2 am on Monday, our train blew a huge whistle which came as a big relief to all of us. My dad informed others that the problems were solved and any time from then our train may resume journey. After 5 minutes from the whistle, our train resumed its journey slowly and until then I failed to catch the sleep even though I pretended as sleeping. Only after the train started to move, I started to breath freely. It was a terrible incident in my life which I will never forget in my life. Even though, I failed to enjoy that journey very much, I have learned lot of lessons from that journey. I have realized that anything can happen in our life at the very next moment and we cannot alter our destiny. I have also realized that it is not necessary that all the journeys might be pleasant ones even if it happens to be with our family and friends. Even though the place we visited was a beautiful one, I could not enjoy the beauty of that place because of the terrible experiences in the night. I have witnessed the cooperation of the passengers inside train during that night and realized that human being is a social animal who have no independent existence. In our society, many people have the false belief that they need no support at all from others for leading a successful life. But it is a fact that even the richest human in this world cannot sustain his life without seeking assistance from others. Works Cited 1. “Oops! Describing and remembering Accidental Agents in English, Spanish and Japanese”. 9 September 2010 Read More