A Missed Opportunity :: Personal Narrative Writing

A Missed OpportunityEvery time we had visited Williamsburg, my mother had always wanted to await the famous Fife and Drum Corps. dolled up in full costume of red coats and tri-corner hats, these re-enactors parade down the Duke of Gloucester Street playing their instruwork forcets in a call to arms of the towns militia. These men have always been one of the main attractions of Williamsburg and one of the symbols of the colonial area. They perform only once or twice a week and by both bad luck or fate, my mother has never actually seen them march. The single time that she did wait for their performance to start, it was cancelled due to bad weather.It was the second daylight of our familys annual three-day trip to Colonial Williamsburg. We had spent the majority of the day strolling about the colonial area, and tensions were getting high. My brother, as the middle child, always picked the most unseasonable times to annoy my sister, the youngest. After several near fights, my paren ts thought that a little separation was in order, at least until dinner. My mother suggested that we go see a program entitled Dance Our Dearest Diversion. Of course, she knew that neither one of us would care to go see the show, being as uninterested in colonial dancing as a cat is of swimming.Per tradition, my brother and I had earlier in the day bought colonial styled games. He had chosen a handsome set of Fox and Geese, while I had decided on the more exotic and unknown Mancala. All the game consisted of was a flat gameboard with fourteen pits on it, two of the pits being slightly larger than the rest. The bigger pits were at the ends of the board, and the other twelve were in two rows between them. Those pits had four stones (or form marbles) in them, and the object of the game was to capture the most stones. According to the little pamphlet that came with the game, Mancala required more mathematical reasoning than sheer luck. We had sat beneath the shade of one of the numerous trees that lined the main street of the colonial section, to try out my newly bought game and to rest my tired feet. The cool shot soothed my scorched my neck as I contemplated my next move.