Do you wish you could return to a moment in your past?
“You look like the color of poop.”
My pudgy, 5-year-old, poop-colored self couldn’t muster any words. She just looked down at her skin, ran into the bathroom and tried to wash the “poop” off her skin. At that point in my life, I didn’t understand the connotations my skin color had. That all changed on April 15, 2013, the day of the Boston Marathon Bombing.
At 13, I was a bubbly teenager who thought she knew it all. Life was good. Life was simple. One day I was walking home after basketball practice, sweaty and ready for a warm shower followed by an evening curled up with my copy of Animal Farm. After my shower, I saw a new SMS from a boy in my class! The subject line read: Boston Marathon. Excited, I clicked on it right away.
“Who did it? Was it your cousin? You don’t deserve to be here, I’m going to make you leave!”
Confused and scared, I Googled “Boston Marathon” and my screen was inundated with stories of what had transpired. My heart fell to the core of the earth; how could this happen? Why would anyone do such a terrible thing? How could anyone think my family was involved in such a horrendous act?
My whirlwind of confusion was interrupted by a loud crash and the sound of shards of glass falling on the pavement. I couldn’t tell if I was more shocked, scared, or saddened when I saw my own classmates, people I had sat next to in class every day of the last year, throwing rocks at the lamppost outside of my home.
My parents rushed to the window and carried me away. They turned off all the lights and we ran into the basement where we stayed for several hours in silence; no one knew what to say.
Eventually my dad went upstairs to ensure it was safe for us to go back upstairs. He grabbed a broom and a dustpan and swept the glass off the sidewalk with his head hung low. His face looked as defeated as our lamppost, broken, but on the inside. But he didn’t say a single word.
Suddenly it all clicked: while I thought of myself as an American, others saw me as an outsider because my melanin was slightly more pigmented. Yet a person’s identity isn’t restricted to a singular adjective; who I am is a compilation of all the experiences I’ve accumulated. I also realized that the mindset that yearned to neatly categorize my identity wasn’t mine alone--as humans, we have a tendency to label things so we may understand them better. Yet, this propensity to classify each other creates a problem: it causes us to focus on our differences rather than on our shared humanity.
Solving this problem of identity is crucial in order to progress as a society. The solution lies within each of us to look beyond the adjectives that are most apparent and truly see one another without trying to classify one another.
Hi guys. I am not a huge fan of the flow if this essay, let me know if you have any suggestions. Also, do you think I oversimplify the situation too much? Thanks :)
My pudgy, 5-year-old, poop-colored self couldn’t muster any words. She just looked down at her skin, ran into the bathroom and tried to wash the “poop” off her skin. At that point in my life, I didn’t understand the connotations my skin color had. That all changed on April 15, 2013, the day of the Boston Marathon Bombing.
At 13, I was a bubbly teenager who thought she knew it all. Life was good. Life was simple. One day I was walking home after basketball practice, sweaty and ready for a warm shower followed by an evening curled up with my copy of Animal Farm. After my shower, I saw a new SMS from a boy in my class! The subject line read: Boston Marathon. Excited, I clicked on it right away.
“Who did it? Was it your cousin? You don’t deserve to be here, I’m going to make you leave!”
Confused and scared, I Googled “Boston Marathon” and my screen was inundated with stories of what had transpired. My heart fell to the core of the earth; how could this happen? Why would anyone do such a terrible thing? How could anyone think my family was involved in such a horrendous act?
My whirlwind of confusion was interrupted by a loud crash and the sound of shards of glass falling on the pavement. I couldn’t tell if I was more shocked, scared, or saddened when I saw my own classmates, people I had sat next to in class every day of the last year, throwing rocks at the lamppost outside of my home.
My parents rushed to the window and carried me away. They turned off all the lights and we ran into the basement where we stayed for several hours in silence; no one knew what to say.
Eventually my dad went upstairs to ensure it was safe for us to go back upstairs. He grabbed a broom and a dustpan and swept the glass off the sidewalk with his head hung low. His face looked as defeated as our lamppost, broken, but on the inside. But he didn’t say a single word.
Suddenly it all clicked: while I thought of myself as an American, others saw me as an outsider because my melanin was slightly more pigmented. Yet a person’s identity isn’t restricted to a singular adjective; who I am is a compilation of all the experiences I’ve accumulated. I also realized that the mindset that yearned to neatly categorize my identity wasn’t mine alone--as humans, we have a tendency to label things so we may understand them better. Yet, this propensity to classify each other creates a problem: it causes us to focus on our differences rather than on our shared humanity.
Solving this problem of identity is crucial in order to progress as a society. The solution lies within each of us to look beyond the adjectives that are most apparent and truly see one another without trying to classify one another.
Hi guys. I am not a huge fan of the flow if this essay, let me know if you have any suggestions. Also, do you think I oversimplify the situation too much? Thanks :)
Great writing and sentence structure. Your anecdotes at the beginning are very powerful and certainly attention-grabbing. They are specific to you and vulnerable enough that the reader is scared or upset with you. After the line "Suddenly it all clicked," I think your writing tone changed to be more formal and vague. Your comments about the progression of society, although extremely accurate, felt distanced and out of nowhere. It would be great if you could put these realizations of yours into context (when did you start figuring out that people like to put labels on things? How has this affected the way you live?). If you start answering these questions, it will be easier to fully respond to the prompt. With the knowledge you have now, how would you've responded to your experiences as a child differently?
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