One of my most successful moments happened when I completed the construction of a 10-story card house. This remarkable feat happened in 4th grade on Halloween, Monday, October 31st, 1999. I remember it as a somewhat sunny day, clear and crisp, and all the 4th graders, including me, waited for the principal to announce that the Halloween parade would be beginning and that we should file out. My teacher, Mrs. Kerins, gave us all free time to do whatever we desired, so I decided to build a card house with a friend to hand me the cards as I went along.

     The time showed 1 o'clock, and at about that time, I pulled out approximately four decks of incomplete, worn, bent, and crumpled cards. I knelt on a large carpet, and began the base of the 10-story card house in the center of the carpet. I stacked two cards vertically against each other, so that they would stand up, and I put ten of these stacks of two in a row next to each other. After this, I would lay a card flat vertically between two of the towers made by the stacks, then the next two towers, then the next, and so on. Once I had all ten of the stacks connected by the nine flat cards, the base of the 2nd floor waited complete and ready to be built on. Getting this 2nd floor built and stabilized turned out to be one of the most difficult parts of constructing this card house. From the 2nd floor on, I no longer had the rug as a support from underneath, but instead the flat cards and the stacks from the floors beneath. Therefore, I had to be much more gentle and careful while placing the cards on top. Also, I had to make sure that when stacking the cards I didn't tilt them to one side. Otherwise, when I reach the top floors, the tower may be leaning too much and would collapse. So this is how it continued, floor upon floor, with many nerve-racking moments when one stack of cards became unstable, and the whole floor and perhaps the floor underneath tumbled down like a row of dominoes.

     By the time I got to the 8th floor, basically the whole class and the teacher sat or stood around the tower watching me put the last few floors on the card house. When I had the 8th floor complete and one of the stacks on the ninth floor stabilized, the teacher halted my construction to take a photograph just incase the tower plummeted before I reached the 10th floor. After the photo, I worked very hastily, but carefully, because of my excitement to finish the tower. Yet, my hands trembled, my body shivered, and all my classmates held their breath. At last, I completed the 9th floor, and the base of the 10th floor sat awaiting the last stack of cards. At that point, we closed the door, and all the windows as to prevent any draft of wind from blowing down my card house. But the person who closed the window nearest to the tower, slammed the window shut letting in a puff of wind that shook and rattled the tower. I mumbled to myself, "Oh my God. Please, don't fall, don't fall. Please." I had my eyes shut, not able to open them for fear of seeing all my effort wasted and the card house in ruins. But at last, after what seemed like hours, I slowly opened one eye, and unbelievably, there it stood, my card house with just two cards missing. The moment I had been waiting for all along finally arrived. My friend handed me the last two cards. I took one in each hand, and as slowly as a sloth moves, I placed them on top of the one card base of the 10th floor. The grip my fingers had on the cards just wouldn't let me release the cards. But somehow, I managed to force them apart, and there, at last, stood the finished 10-story card house.

     At this point, I let out an immense sigh of relief and satisfaction, and a broad smile appeared across my face. All my classmates gathered around me and behind the card house, and the teacher took the picture of an incredible achievement. Finally, it came the time for us to destroy the card house. We debated for some time about whether we should take each floor off individually or just pull out one card from the 1st floor and watch the tower fall into the cavity created. We finally agreed on the second choice, to pull out one card from the 1st floor, and watch the tower drop down. I let my friend who handed me the cards throughout the construction do this task and I watched as the 10-story card house I created turned into a pile of cards.