Portrait of a Family Member - Personal Statement Example

Though the initial shock and grief we (the rest of the family) felt was tremendous but we thought that being a kid he just got misled and smoked out of peer pressure or just simple curiosity. Simple guidance persuasion was what was requires or so we thought. This was not to be so. This initial attraction towards cigarettes slowly turned into infatuation and finally became an addiction. One day when I was preparing to go out to a party at a friend's place, I found out that my necklace was missing.

This necklace was given to me as a birthday gift from one of my friends and so it was obviously quite precious to me. I nearly 'ransacked' the whole house but could not find it. Just recently John had started going out with a new girl. Our parents were off to an official dinner of dad's. John had invited (in fact brought) his girlfriend over to our place. I just happened to linger downstairs during my search for the lost necklace it was then that I incidentally glimpsed at the couple sitting near the television.

It was then that it struck me; there it was right in front of my very eyes the necklace that I was searching for was around John's girlfriends. There was no mistaking it, and just to make sure I went around and started small talk with the girl. My eyes were on the necklace during the whole time and I was ready to bet it was my necklace. So the necklace had never been in the home in the first place. As it had turned out my birthday present was now a partnership gift of my brother's girlfriend.

With the passage of time and as John grew older (I guess he had reached tenth grade by then) John was progressing into a spoilt brat. Sleeping by daytime, skipping/bunking school, and partying all night. As the only possible evident solution available to my parents they stopped giving John his fixed monthly pocket money. This ought to have stopped or at least reduced his frequency of partying out but to our surprise that did not happen in fact it seemed that this shortage of cash didn't even bother him in the least.

It was on excursions to the local market (which my mother frequents often by the way) that it came to her notice she was coming across a lot of similar artifacts/jewelry in the nearby shops lately. It took only a few days for her to realize that many of her precious items such as wedding gifts and even some jewelry were no where to be found on closer inspection it dawned upon my mother that those items that we saw in the local market were none other then mother's. The secret source of John's relative freedom from shortage of cash all came into perspective as well.

Apart from the mental and psychological shock this event caused to our family it also proved to be a financial shock as my mother had to buy all the back from the market.Things took a turn for the worse when John entered into high school. Instead of growing mature with the passage of time John was going from bad to worse. Somehow he ended up in a group of guys (whom he rather preferred to call friends) who were a small time gang. Yes! John had turned into a small time gangster. I still don't believe myself as I write these lines that a cute lovely little