Thank You, Zach (The Zach Effect) The First Autobiography of Daniel Soto

Great Memories

I call this chapter one of the best moments of my life because I will never forget them in a very grateful way. Each paragraph has its own stories of my great memories that I have throughout my life. I wrote this chapter to see that everyone has great memories and the bad ones in our memories. Sometimes life can suck, but not all the time. We have to remind ourselves of the great memories that each of us has, and here are some of mine and have fun with it. I wrote this chapter because of the kid who inspired and reminded me of the greatest moments of my life by seeing his best memories with his friends and family.

One of my unforgettable memories is when I was attending Fleming College; I had a pretty good friend at chess that got me into it. We both participated in a chess club at the school in which all students there plus the teacher participate in a contest of who was the best chess player at the school. My friend beat the teacher and ended being first place, and I was third. After moving to the United States, I never practice playing chess again and stopped being good at it until I played with friends at college. My family was never into chess, so I did not have someone to practice with. I also remember at Fleming College, I played the violin. I had a private teacher who came to my house to teach my brother and me to play the violin. Both my brother and I did many violin concerts at the after-school activities with other kids. Still, after we moved to the US, we stopped practicing it because we could not bring our violins, have enough money to buy new ones, or have enough money or time to contact a private teacher again. I will both always remember playing chess and violin, and hopefully, one day, I play chess again. I do accept playing instruments is not for me.

When I was a kid living in Peru, I went to Argentina to meet my mother's side because she is also from Argentina. All four of us arrived in Buenos Aires at one of my mother's aunts. I had fun there because we went to see inside Boca Junior's stadium. Boca Junior is one of the soccer teams in Buenos Aires, like their rivalry River Plate. Unluckily, I did not see a soccer match at that stadium because they weren't playing, but I could experience it from inside. Do I remember me being inside the stadium physically? Not really because I was too young to remember it, but I do remember my parents telling me about it. In Buenos Aires, I was also pretending to be Spiderman since I was a fan of Peter Parker. I pretended that I threw spider webs under my hand at my family, and fortunately, they played along. I also met my mother's grandmother, grandma Chula (even ignoring her name's English pronunciation). Unfortunately, she is deceased now, well died a long time ago. I hope I can meet her again but in the heavens. Also, at that time, it rained with thunderstorms which were very common in Buenos Aires, but I never saw rain that heavily nor saw thunderstorms that loud in my life. I was scared at first and did not like Buenos Aires because of it. I did not know at that time I was going to live in Houston, which is also a city that rains heavily with thunderstorms. I hope to go to Argentina and see my mother's side of the family again before turning it into regret. If I do not see them again, I will most likely see them in the heavens above. Somedays, I remember them, but I only have a few memories of them. These few memories are some of the best memories that I have ever had, and I would like to share them with you to appreciate life a bit more than you already do.

When I was living in Peru, my brother and I watched a TV show called 31 minutos (31 minutes). This show was a puppet show which was very fun for us and had their album that my brother and I bought it. This album is entirely in Spanish except for one song in English called 'They Wrong Cut My Hair.' In Peru, my brother and I sang it around our house with our grandmother and watched the show with her. I still have their album and sometimes listen to it to remember some great memories with it. I also remember my brother, my cousin, and I watched Pokémon in Spanish at a specific time every day. At that particular time of the day, there was silence in our house; we were all watching the show, and my mother could have a break from the noise that we made and could use the computer that she wanted to use. Most of the time, my brother used the computer. I also remember a time that I had chickens on our roof. At one moment, those chickens were running freely, and my mother, for some reason, was scared of them, so she called a list from the oldest to the youngest child of the house to pick up those chickens. No one could pick up those chickens until it was my turn to do it, and it was pretty simple for me. Everyone was shocked that I was brave enough to pick them up and put them where we had them.