Prompt # 5. In Under 650 Words.

I teach Senior Seminar, a class designed to assist students preparing for college. Since the application process happens early in the year, in our first week, we dived into writing essays to meet the prompt requirements. 

As a class, we chose prompt #5 – a chance to discuss an event in their lives which shaped them, and how.

Most of my students chose an event in their life which was traumatic: the loss of a loved one, a catastrophic injury, or a friend taking a wayward path in life. Others used the birth of a younger sibling, a monumental event in its own right. I tried, unsuccessfully, to suggest admissions offices would look more favorably on the essays that were able to take a minor event in one’s life, and create a story from it. 

Students didn’t think it could be done in under 650 words, so I thought I’d give it a shot to prove them wrong. 

I have memories of conversations I had with my parents as a small child, snippets of which they have no recollection, yet stand out, while the more important things like cleaning my ears slipped by the wayside.  

In particular, I remember a time my father and I were working in our backyard, digging up cinder blocks that lined our driveway and replacing it with tar-covered wood beams. My dad wore a wife-beater, showing off his sweaty biceps. He had a tattoo on his arm, and I asked him about it.

My father stuck his shovel into the ground, leaned on it and looked at me.  

“Son”¸ he began, “I got this the summer I spent at the shore. I thought it was cool for about two days, tattooing my nickname on my arm. I’ve regretted it ever since. Look at it today: the color’s bled, my muscles sag, and I’m stuck with it for the rest of my life.”

Today, tattoos are extremely popular, but because of that insignificant conversation my father and I had when I was eight, I’ve never wanted one. My brother has at least ten; my wife wanted to get one when we married. I protested, suggesting (jokingly) that a pre-nuptial agreement might be in order.

She never had it done.

Years later after my father passed, I talked to my favorite aunt about my father’s life growing up. My father never spoke about his teenage years – I knew he had a history to hide, but I didn’t know what. The stories he did share came from his youth. 

For instance, my grandmother was a harsh racist; and my father told a story about bringing a black friend home from school one day. When she saw an African-American in her house, she grabbed an extension cord and ran after him screaming the N-word, and threatened to whip him. The boy fled, embarrassed but unharmed. Instead, my father received the angry end of a racist rant, both physically and verbally. 

My aunt suggested that my father hadn’t maintained such an innocent position either. She told of times my father engaged in his own racist actions as a young man. It turned out that he had regularly gotten into racial fights, and more than once found himself in jail due to his actions, the most serious of which took him before a judge… stories I never heard from his mouth. 

My father passed away twenty years ago, but this novel view of him gave me an epiphany, as I saw the conversation we had in a new light. My father got his tattoo in the summer of ’66, well after his issues with race and the police. He married less than two years later; I followed shortly after. By the time we had that conversation, my father’s past was long gone. 

My father coached our Little League team, assisted by the African-American father of my best friend. We attended our African-American neighbor’s son’s wedding. 

There was never any hint of a previous life, one tainted with discrimination and anger.

My father vacationed at the Jersey shore that year he got his tattoo, spending his days in the sun. He was blond-haired and blue-eyed, a true Aryan, if one ever existed. The more time he spent in the sun, the lighter his hair got, and at some point during that summer, my father tattooed his nickname on his arm. 

Maybe he was drunk. Maybe he didn’t realize the alternate meaning initially.

But under that hot sun, quizzed by an eight-year old, I’m sure he understood my sudden interest in his arm, and the importance of being a parent. In that moment, he changed my life, for reasons I didn’t understand until recently.

His nickname?  

Whitey.

624 words.  Best I could do.

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