I was walking down the street, in the cold by myself, spaced out. There was no particular thought on my mind, just random things. I started walking down my long block. The snow has melted a long time ago, and spring was right around the corner. Looking at the trees lining the sidewalk, I remembered how I used to stand there in awe, because the place that I had moved from didn’t have trees along the streets. I laughed to myself, recalling how scared I was to travel to a different country, have new friends, and start anew.

Everyone has experienced that moment when you want to freeze a place of time and never want it to change. Calling to mind that memory now makes me feel sad. That moment was the last time I was with my two best friends before the big move. We were at the ice-skating rink drinking hot coco, a picture perfect memory. At that moment I didn’t want things to change, I wanted time to stop. I didn’t want to move, staying there with my best friends made me refuse to go, but, like all parents, mine insisted that I come with them. It’s as if I had a choice to begin with.

Looking back, I remember telling, no promising, myself that I would do what ever it took to stop this change from happening, so I did what any typical teenager would do. I flunked school, was anti-social, and didn’t listen to my parents.

Than there was that science class. I think that science class changed me forever. We did a science experiment by putting nine white roses into six separate cups of water. But each cup of water was a different color, three were blue, three were green and the other three were red. Most of the colored water made the roses change to that color. But one of the roses in the colored water didn’t change. I guess it just didn’t work.

Our teacher saw the white rose that didn’t change color and announced that the rose was probably defective.

I raised my hand to ask why, and the conversation that followed still echoes in my mind.

“Why would that mean the rose is defective?” I asked with curiosity. “Maybe the rose just doesn’t want to change, it doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with it.”

“Well, the rose is scientifically supposed to change,” she replied. “When it doesn’t, people can assume that there is something wrong with it because it’s not scientifically capable of prevent this change, no matter how hard it tries.”
It felt like she was talking about me. I’m trying to prevent a big change, but it will never work, it would just come along later in life.

That day I was walking down the same block I am walking down right now. Now, as I am thinking back, it was about around the same season, right around the corner from spring. I had seen something in a bush that caught my eye.
It was a flower bud, just about to bloom. I decided right then and there that I was going to change myself. The flower bud taught me a very important lesson. The bush didn’t know what it was going to grow. Bushes can’t think, so they don’t know. But they end up being beautiful with flowers all over them. True, there might be thorns in them, but they are still beautiful.
We don’t know what we are going to become. We just have to go along with the change and hope that it’s for the best. I did just that, and I ended up with tons of friends, the best grades, and new attitude.
I just passed the same bush and smiled to myself. I admired the white roses that has begun to blossom early.