Personal Narrative: The Straw That Break The Camel's Back

“The straw that broke the camel’s back”, an idiom reflecting reaching maximum capacity of strain or tolerance. As a commonly expressed phrase, you never really know what it looks like until it happens to you. Whether it be a major incidence, or completely minuscule, to the point of seeming unnoticeable, its occurrence is quite real, as is the potential fallout from the breakdown. I will never forget Thanksgiving 1996 and my front row witnessing of one of these events. As a “big Thanksgiving” year, meaning we all coordinated our holiday plans based on the premise of alternating attending the Thanksgiving or Christmas gathering that year, or spending it apart, with our significant others’ families, there were a number of us in attendance at

In rare obnoxious form that day, she had delighted in annoying me the entire afternoon; something that wasn’t about to change at that moment. Everybody started piling the massive amounts of aromatic turkey, mouthwatering stuffing, fluffy mashed potatoes, and colorful seven-layer salad onto their bone-white Corelle plates, and I reached in front of me for my absolute favorite food; green bean casserole. Viewed by most as a meal accompaniment, green bean casserole easily could have served as a wholly satisfying complete meal for me. As you may have guessed, my fingers found empty space as my darling sister snatched the steaming bowl first. Now, since it is standard to pass food around the table clockwise, I only slightly protested this theft, however, with a wicked glint in her eye, she proceeded to serve herself and then pass it to her right. Needless to say, my objection grew, seemingly exponentially with each member that joined in the joke and continued to transport it away from me. Feeling upset build within me the final insult of eventually receiving the scraped clean vessel pushed me over the edge; I burst into