Friends and Family

This is an essay I wrote for my English class. I wrote my essay about how friends and family help you through things. I wrote about the friends in the movie The Station Agent and family  in Win Win. And I wrote about a personal experience about how a family member helped me make a choice.

“A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked,” Bernard Meltzer. Friends are important in life, because they know when things are bad, and they want to help. Family is also important in life because they will always be there, even when friends are not. In both Win Win and The Station Agent, the main characters find that their friends are important in their lives.

            Finn, from The Station Agent, seems very simple in the beginning of the movie, having a routine that he does every day, but when his business partner dies he moves to Newfoundland, and he meets two unlikely friends who show him just what friendship is. “It’s funny how people see me and treat me, since I’m really just a simple, boring person.” When Finn says this he wishes he could just be left alone, because he never has had real friends before. So when Olivia and Joe’s friendship with Finn starts to grow, Finn does not know how to be a friend back to them. They want to be friends with him and want to help him in his struggle at be a dwarf. So at the end of the movie when Olivia says, “Would you do me a favor and not look at me right now,” Finn wants to help her with her depression.

            Kyle is a lost teenager who just wanted to get away from his mom and her boyfriend by staying with his grandfather, but when he finds the Flaherty family instead, he discovers what family really means. Mike’s wife is hesitant to trust Kyle because of his appearance: “We have kids, Mike. I’m not taking any chances with Eminem down there.” But when Kyle shows interest in the wrestling team, and turns out to be really good, the whole family starts to warm up to him and believe in him. “The kid’s got a chance to do something special, maybe even change his life,” Mike remarks regarding Kyle’s wrestling talent. But all goes wrong when Kyle’s mom shows up demanding he return to Ohio with her. Kyle lets it get inside his head right before the state championships and loses. After Kyle loses the wrestling match, he no longer trusts Mike because Mike had lied to his grandfather. Kyle starts to pack his bags to leave with his mother, whom he hates, when Jackie, Mike’s wife, tells him, “Kyle, we love you,” and that is when Kyle knows that, even though they are not blood related, the Flaherty’s love him as if he were their own child, and he loves them as if they were his parents.

            Entering Las Lomas was a scary thing for me because at my middle school we only had 24 people in our eighth grade graduating class. I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to fit in at Las Lomas and was scared that it was going to be hard to make friends. One thing that really helped me make friends was deciding to play a fall sport, water polo, which started the week before school started. The person who helped me decide to play water polo was my mom. I can always count on her to help me decide what to do to further my education or to help me with a friend problem or even help me pick out my Prom dress. I also trust my friends’ opinions but not as much as my mom’s.

            Without Olivia and Joe, Finn would have never been able to learn how to be a true friend, and Kyle would not know what a real family was without the Flahertys. Friends are just important as family, and considering their opinions is something I do all the time. Without my mom, I would not have made some of the greatest friends that I have today. With family and friends, Finn, Kyle, and I have all been able to do great things, such as saving a friend’s life, learning to accept that all people are not the same, and making a major choice that will affect the rest of my life.