Noah
A famous quote says that the eyes are the window to
the soul. Some have seen me as a nonentity, others a
target for bullying. The latter was the most common.
Others saw me as a (jokingly) insane person. Now, as I’ve
heard from others, one of the popular kids to be envied.
People have treated me as Langston Hughes in his
poem, “Harlem”, separated but still partially accepted, but
with various levels of acquiescence. The only people I’ve
had trouble with were only 2 groups, unlike Hughes, who
faced discrimination from a large ethnic group. Another
way I relate to Theme for English B, is the way he sees
himself just like anyone else, but everyone else sees him
differently. And just like him, I eventually overcame those
struggles and became the person I am today.
I can relate to the author Once Upon a Time because
occasionally, in my sleep, I will “sense” someone watching
me sleep and wake up thinking someone is there, but in
reality, it was nothing more than an unfounded hunch. But
unlike Nadine Gordimer, I will not tell myself a bedtime
story to help myself fall asleep when I awake in the middle
of the night. Or, unlike the parents in the story within the
story, I don’t think about thoughts of security options of
best defenses and their practicality versus their
unnecessary ostentatiousness and futile decorations. But
occasionally I do think that something bad will happen and
keep a lock blade on my nightstand.
I can also mostly relate to Ishmael Baeh because
some people have been weirded out by me, and others
simply intrigued. I have moved from Omaha to Bennington
to Fremont and kept having to learn different strategies for
integrating myself into a group. So I know how it is for
Baeh to be in a new place and have people trying to
categorize you. But unlike him, I have not tried to project
myself as African royalty or someone pivotal.
I’m not really one hundred percent sure how to try and
connect myself to The Power of the Dinner Table, because
my family was on the cusp of suffering from modern-day
poverty but things never got bad enough to where we
actually were. I can’t compare myself to the kids in the
story because I have not suffered from homelessness,
hunger, abuse, or sexual assault. It is also not divergent
for me to have a bed at home, or enough food to eat.
Along with the factoid that I don’t call people old enough to
be parents, except for the people who are actually my
parents, “Momma” or “Papa”.
When I was in fifth grade, I got into a fight with
someone who frequently bullied me. It had ended with the
booth of us getting suspended. In seventh grade, I kept
getting bullied, but I made a show of it sliding off of my
back, but it still hurt. When I got to Trinity, my life turned
around, I was coming home from school happier and I was
doing better in school. When I moved to Cedar Bluffs I had
started doing better, but with small little bits of bullying
from Trey and a few other guys, but it is insignificant. Like
Langston Hughes, I excelled and thrived despite being
repressed.
Although some people have tried getting me kicked
out of schools, I stayed, much to their annoyance. I have
yet to annoy the inhabitants of Cedar Bluffs to immense
proportions to where they want me to leave. But
fortunately I will stay for the rest of my high school career.
