Show don't Tell

I believe seventh grade was the last year I diagrammed sentences, identified clauses, and dangled participles. (For more fun on diagramming sentences, click here)
Eighth grade was devoted to literature and expository writing.
Ninth grade explored prepositional phrases and the introduction to decanting a work of creative writing; identifying the elements that ferment into a full-bodied refreshment.

Ninth grade writing assignments were hell and nirvana. I choked on one writing assignment that required me to show, not tell that "the roller coaster was thrilling." I was probably under additional stress considering Biology, World History and the Coast Guard manual stalking my trail through Homework Forest.

Having at that time fewer than 10 years experience riding Roller Coasters, I was tentative in my treatment of building anticipation while a chain announces each foot of an ascent. The carnies with their smiles like a condemned fun-house, only half there. The hairs on the back of your neck reach for solid ground.
It is too late, testing the surety of the foam on the metal bar now, you have no choice but to meet your destiny.
You are ripped from the rules of nature and suspended over a microcosm of delight, but before you have a chance to appreciate its beauty (for the simple fact that it has not floated away!), you are yanked forward through the dark and carried upwards once more.
There comes a point where it seems to be over, the first peak was ages ago, the train will surely creak to a stop. Then, a final toss of heart to throat, and at last, but far too soon, does everything jerk back into place, hissing relief.

I agonized over the pointless details of the assignment. There were over 50 choices for "Show, Don't Tell" topics.
Was I supposed to let my teacher know which one I had chosen in the title? That seemed to forfeit the game.
Was it like a game of taboo where using the words "roller coaster" and "thrill" were automatic losses?
A whole page?

It's no secret that New York is loud, large city. Its cacophony streams throughout each day. Outside my window it includes, but is not limited to: mass transit, thrumming bass, screaming children, raving lunatics, and blaring car horns.

I've grown accustomed to most of it.
The buses help me keep time. The train makes a friendly whooshing sound as it slows to swallow more passengers.
Screaming children are a part of life, and mostly one that tends to be in bed after 11 o'clock. What's more, I've heard the same raving lunatic drop some serious gems on the sidewalk on more than one occasion. Just last week, he was urging some truants to stay in school, lest they end up a crazy mother-snackpack like he.
I even love the satisfying syllables of the freight trucks as they careen down my street towards Flushing, leaving the ground with one sweet "kuh" and falling back down with a "chunk."

I can even handle to incessant car horns of the car-service driver who is lost and wants to make all the sleeping people aware of it. And the whooping car alarms of the sorry fool who thought he would park his car at his front door? Well, I learned that tune in the suburbs.

However, there is one thing I still have not grown accustomed to, (and it is here where I try to show, not tell) the snackpackin' garbage trucks. It is a truly painful sound. Like nails on a chalk board, if the chalkboard was rusted metal and your teacher's nails were collapsing cans and glass bottles (which need to be recycled!) The pistons always already seeming to exhale their last effort, but no, this is New York and there are probably hundreds of pounds of trash left to compact on this block alone.
NYC garbage trucks are nightmares of reality, and I'm sure--if what I learned about Socrates in 12th grade was accurate--Plato would have urged us to stay in the caves, content with the puppetry, so as never to deal with the amount of waste we create in the world.