OOGLAY!

        I've had a great many embarrassing moments in my life. Some of the most embarrassing have occurred while I was attending school. One of these moments happened in high school during my junior year. I remember it well because it concerned an event that I deeply feared I would encounter during my formative years: a high school dance. Not that I was a poor dancer. Nothing of the sort! It was just that I had to do it with girls. Later in life, I found out that if I had to do it, doing it with girls had its advantages. But that's another story.          The scene was the high school cafeteria. The red-faced moment occurred during a Sadie Hawkin's Day auction. There was, you see, a particular girl attending said school who was very ugly. She was so ugly, in fact, that we--my school compadres and I--used the word "ooglay" to refer to her: a word that connotes outright, without-a-doubt nasti ness in the looks department. Anyway, lucky me, old "parrot-beak" (as we sometimes called her), with a great deal of fanfare and flourish, picked me as the slob of the hour and plunked down good money to confirm her choice. Embarrassed isn't really the word I want here. Mortified is more like it. I was mortified, horrified, embarrassed, and downright shocked at the prospect of attending a school dance with the Beast of Babcock High.         Looking back at this event with an aged eye, an eye steeped in a broth of maturity and experience, I find that I am still embarrassed. My embarrassment today, however, stems from the realization that never was I so cruel and heartless as I was at that auction some thirty years ago. Often do I wonder how that girl must have felt as the jeers and catcalls of an undisciplined mob cascaded around her. I fervently hope that I shall never meet this girl face to face in the present. That would surely be the most embarrassing moment of my life.

• Mirror the introduction with the conclusion.

• Don’t repeat the introduction! Mirroring is saying something similar, with some of the same elements – creates a sense of familiarity for the reader!

Introduction

From the parking lot, I could see the towers of the castle of the Magic Kingdom standing stately against the blue sky. To the right, the tall peak of The Matterhorn rose even higher. From the left, I could hear the jungle sounds of Adventureland. As I entered the gate, Main Street stretched before me with its quaint shops evoking an old-fashioned small town so charming it could never have existed. I was entranced. Disneyland may have been built for children, but it brings out the child in adults.

Conclusion

I thought I would spend a few hours at Disneyland, but here I was at 1:00 A.M., closing time, leaving the front gates with the now dark towers of the Magic Kingdom behind me. I could see tired children, toddling along and struggling to keep their eyes open as best they could. Others slept in their parents' arms as we waited for the parking lot tram that would take us to our cars. My forty-year-old feet ached, and I felt a bit sad to think that in a couple of days I would be leaving California, my vacation over, to go back to my desk. But then I smiled to think that for at least a day I felt ten years old again.