Out of both stories, Gian Pagnucci's "Living the Narrative Life: Telling Your Own Story" resonated with me slightly more than the other piece.  Despite the message -- a ploy to encourage others to write and foster a deeper meaning behind the act -- the chapter doesn't come off as hokey, nor does Pagnucci speak in platitudes.  In time with his overall message, that paying heed to life's narratives "can teach [us] about [ourselves] . . . how they can sensitive [us] to the stories of others, and how they can focus [our] understand of the world from a personal vantage point" (81), Pagnucci practices what he preaches.  He suffuses life into what could have been a boring essay by including memorable events from his past: his first comic book purchase; that time he and his college-age friends braved a twenty-foot rock wall because it made them feel like superheroes; recovering in the hospital after getting struck by a car and making a friend; buying two young children a box of comics at a garage sale. 

Without these events, the piece would've read like a typical assigned reading.  Not mind-numbingly boring, but something that does not necessarily resonate with the reader.  With the addition of these narrative events, Pagnucci illustrates that he truly believes what he's writing.  With the knowledge that some day soon, the reader might forget one of these formative events in your life, writing them down makes sense.  The internet is littered with blogs, isn't it?  There are cooking blogs and sports blogs and even blogs detailing the building of model robots, so why not begin an online blog detailing the happenings in your typical 9 to 5?

The piece struck a chord with me because, in the spring of 2005 when I was a senior in high school, I was diagnosed with Nasopharyngeal carcinoma and was forced to undergo treatment right away.  I was able to go to prom and walk at graduation, thankfully (radiation had yet to begin at those points, also thankfully), but despite all of the hardships and a period where I thought I was going to die on an hourly basis, I learned and forgot more in that stretch of a year and a half of treatment and recovery than most people learn in a lifetime.  I learned who my true friends were, the people that stuck beside me through thick and thin, as well as how to deal with a feeding tube, the death of close friends (some of which hadn't reached puberty, others that had yet to learn how to walk), and expectations moving forward.  If I'd had a blog, I don't think I would've documented a ton of those things, because most of them have stuck with me.  One doesn't forget seeing a coffin less than four feet long for a two-year-old.  

But I would've been able to document the whacky things that happened throughout the course of my treatment, like the time a crackhead broke into our private Cancer Kid's Wing of the hospital in search of an exit out of the building.  He picked the wrong nurses to trifle with, and ended up getting tackled and held down by two women half his size until security could arrive.  Or that time a group of us cancer kids went to Disney World and P.J. (16 at the time), Devin (10 or 11), Tyree (13), and I (18) hit on a group of N.J. high school girls on their senior class trip.  The next day, guess who helped lotion us up beside the pool?

There are things I know I forgot, like how the word "hemorrhoids" came to be known as "homeboys" around clinic -- being heavily drugged up on a regular basis, my memory of that time is a little fuzzy.  But I do remember discussing with the nurses who would play them in the movie I was supposed to be writing, documenting my experiences at St. Christopher's Children's Hospital.  If I had just taken the ten, maybe fifteen minutes of time to record some of those happenings, I could probably have written and published a book.  More important than that, it'd be impossible for me to forget because all of the memories would be written and recorded.

Note to self: blog more.