Falling Down Is Part Of Growing Up By Henry Petroski

In his essay, “Falling Down Is Part of Growing up”, Henry Petroski explains how all humans experience failure throughout their lives. The author compares nursery rhymes with the evolution of the human body and how they evolve as they grow older. He also describes how kids don’t realize the purpose or the meaning of things, but as they grow older, they realize the purpose of things and life in general. He also explains how failure is part of life and the inspiration of great innovations. Henry emphases how past failures in life are the reason for future success.

Like the author, when I was a little kid, I didn’t know the meaning of things and their purpose. My parent used to read me a lot of stories, even though I didn’t understand their meaning. As a kid you are so innocent to understand the purpose of things in your life. My parents have taught me things that I didn’t understand to prepare

For the past few decades there was political hostility between Somalia and Ethiopia and my family and I took that into consideration. By the time we moved to Ethiopia my father was in the U.S and he was helping us financially and that was something we didn’t have before. We also had some relatives that would be helping us to settle down in the capital city Adidas Ababa. The move to Ethiopia meant that I had to learn another language which was even harder than Swahili. Since my father was in the U.S my family and I were in the process of moving and reuniting our family in the U.S. for this reason I didn’t attend a formal school instead I started going to a local religious school. Since I wasn’t attending a public school, I only needed to learn the basic Amharic to communicate with the natives. Everything was easier than I thought at the beginning, but as time went on things got difficult for