Enlightening Experience from the Childhood - Personal Statement Example

Enlightening Experience As a little child, I had a best friend whose was Toby. During the summers growing up, Toby and I would play in the yard all day long. Sometimes we would have lunch at Toby’s house with his mom and sometimes we would have lunch at my house with my mom. But we were always together. One of our favorite games was ‘run’ and another one was ‘tag’. For the first game, we would run as fast as we could from one side of the lawn to the other to see which one could get there first. Our markers were from the old White Oak tree to the edge of the concrete slab. This gave us the farthest to run while still giving us room to slow down before we hit the chain link fence over by the street. Sometimes we would have one of the other kids count to see how fast we were getting there and then we would try to make it even faster. For the other game, we would chase each other around and whoever was ‘it’ had to touch the other one so he would be ‘it’ until we were chasing each other around in a circle. One day we were playing ‘run’ and I was winning. I was running so fast I thought I was flying. But Toby wasn’t very far behind me. I could hear him breathing, so I was putting all my effort into it. I could feel my face getting all scrunched up so I knew I was running all out just to stay ahead of Toby. One minute, Toby was breathing down my neck and the next I heard him yelp and no more breathing. I looked back and some strange man was holding Toby up in the air, his legs still kicking and with a surprised look on his face. I was so surprised I almost ran straight into the fence. The man was yelling something that I couldn’t hear at first because Toby was hollering and blood was pounding in my ears from the race and I was breathing heavy. Then the words came in crystal clear. “… black boy. What do you think you’re doing chasing that white boy like that? Don’t you know your place? I’ll be giving you a sound beating for this one. You just wait till I get my belt off, you’ll get a beating like you never seen before. You no account …” The man kept going on and on and I just couldn’t believe what he was saying. Could Toby really be in trouble for chasing me? I ran over almost as fast as we were racing to make things right. “No, mister. You got it wrong. Toby wasn’t chasing me, we were playing a game. We play it every day. Sometimes I win and sometimes he wins. We’re FRIENDS, mister.” This only seemed to make the man angrier. “YOU MEAN TO TELL ME YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF EQUAL TO THIS BOY?” he yelled. “CAN’T YOU SEE HE’S A BLACK BOY?” I didn’t know what to say. Adults in my world only yelled at kids when we did something really wrong like run in the street without looking which could get us killed or started playing with knives which could cut our fingers off. Was there something dangerous about Toby that I didn’t know about? The man had yelled about Toby being a black boy, so I looked at Toby real close to see if I could find black on him. His eyes had some black in them, but the man’s eyes had black in them, too, so that couldn’t be it. Toby’s skin was darker than mine, though. It was a real comfortable shade of brown, deep and smooth that made you think of warm places in the earth. Mine was a strange kind of yellow like I’d never seen in the ground before, but maybe like a dirty sidewalk chalk that was outside in the rain one time. Could that be what the man meant by ‘black’? By this time all the noise we were making had Toby’s mom and my mom out on the front porch. They were funny because they were like the same Mom. They both came running outside. Toby’s mom had her dishtowel in her hand probably from making lunch for me and Toby. My mom had a broom. She was cleaning up for a special guest. They both stood on the porch for a second and just looked at the strange man trying to hold onto Toby and get his belt off at the same time. Then they both went into action. Like two blue jays, the Mom swooped down on this strange white man and started yelling at him like he’d been yelling at me and Toby. “Let go of my son!” Toby’s mom was yelling and grabbing for Toby at the same time, using her fingernails like bird claws. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?” my mom demanded coming on with her broom in both hands like a baseball bat and her rings sending light dancing around her like some kind of angry angel. The man seemed more afraid of my mom than Toby’s mom. He completely ignored Toby’s mom, but as soon as my mom told him to let go of Toby, the man’s arm went limp and Toby was free. Toby’s mom grabbed him up and then brought him over behind me. “That black boy was chasing that white boy across the yard like they were equals or something,” the man said as if that explained everything. Apparently it did for my mother, who turned white like she sometimes does when I track mud all over her nice clean floor after I broke her favorite lamp and a window with my ball. “How dare you come onto my yard and start harassing my neighbors and filling my child’s ears with such filth and garbage,” she said. She was 20 feet tall and towered over the mean man with his belt half off and who cowered down on the step like a whipped dog. “You may be my cousin but I will not have that kind of attitude anywhere near me or my son,” she said, shaking her broom at him and sending more light flashing around the yard. “Now you leave this place and never come back. I don’t know you anymore.” My mom grabbed my hand and put her arm around Toby’s mom and pushed us all inside our house as the man stood open-mouthed staring after us. We were sitting down for lunch when I finally saw him slink quietly out of the front gate and leave. I remember thinking my mom was the strongest woman on the planet that she could make that scary man cower like that and then just send him away. Not long after that, she stopped wearing her flashing rings. When I asked her why, she said she decided someone else could enjoy them now, she would rather just enjoy staying at home. It wasn’t until years later, that I realized she’d sold her wedding ring and her grandmother’s ring to pay mortgage payments. I found the papers in an old file. Some of the receipts had that strange stretched look of paper that was once wet and pictures were included in the file of me and Toby playing in the yard from that summer. That’s when I learned the true strength and beauty of my mother and the gift she’d given me. Read More