Ashley Gordon
Imagine this: you are sitting in a room full of students. The small hand on the clock is ticking.. Slowly but surely tick tick tick. You are waiting impatiently in your boring old seat for that last tick and as you stare into space, everything suddenly freezes. The teacher that was just writing formulas on the board freezes in cold blood. Everything and everyone around you is frozen like statues in a museum. You are the only one awake and able to move.
A bright blue button appears on your desk. You lift your hand gradually as you slowly approach the button, and then boom you have done it. And with the blink of an eye, you are now in the midst of many men dressed in green, black and brown. But there aren’t many, there are thousands upon thousands. Shooting bullets, grenades, and missiles. You feel something at your fingertips, blood, you feel tears falling down your face. Someone grabs your arm and pulls you aside. You wipe the tears from your face and the blood from your hands and look up at the young man who has helped you. You are confused at first and wonder why this man looks so familiar. He is your grandfather. He introduces himself with no idea as to who you are.
He grabs your hand once more and pulls you back to the battlefield. A few words of English come out of his beaten up lips. As he yells, “this is day six of the war, I don’t know how many more days I can bear to keep fighting.” You look at him in shock and ask him what year it is, he responds with 1967. You suddenly realize you were thrown back in time to the six-day war. A time when Israel fought against the Arab states of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. You look at the man and ask him his name, he responds with Shlomo. You introduce yourself and give him a hug. He pulls away from you and tries to understand what just happened. But doesn’t think too long before picking his rifle up and firing three shots too far for you to see.
Suddenly, then you feel something you have never felt before, a pain like no other. And you drop to the ground. A bullet has entered your body and you begin to panic in fear. You don’t know what to say, act, or do. You lie down on the ground and ask the man to kneel next to you. You tell him you love him and that you are so happy to see him again. Your eyes begin to close and your body begins to tremble. Suddenly the loud noise is gone and you imagine you have finally found peace.
But then you hear three bangs.. Bang bang bang, and you wake up. The blood, the pain, the ache is all gone. And you realize you are back at your boring old desk in the classroom. The bell finally rings and you understand that you were just given one more amazing chance to see your grandfather.
