I'd really like to transcribe it here, because even if the copies I have get lost someday (and it's really a wonder that I even still have them, and that they survived the move from the Ripon house), it'll still survive somewhere in cyberspace.
The assignment was to write an autobiographical story. I wrote mine about my relationship with my dad. It's called "The Hero".
The Hero
My memories of finding out what had happened are so clouded that I don't even remember who told me. I don't know if James and Sally, my younger siblings, were there, or if the bearer of bad news told me alone. I only remember that, at 12 years old, I didn't quite understand the repercussions of my father's actions. I knew my mother was hurt beyond repair, and I knew that the pedestal I had held Dad on for so long now had a huge crack.
Growing up, I always knew that my dad was the perfect father. He could do anything. If there was a level I couldn't get past in a video game, he tackled it effortlessly. If something broke in the house, it was fixed before I knew it. If there was something I didn't know, he knew it for sure. And I knew that if someone tried to break into our home or hurt our family, they were no match for my dad. He was Superman!
I knew that my father loved my siblings and me. I knew that he loved my mother too, and that there was no woman who could compare to her in his eyes. i knew that church was important to him, and that he wanted his children to be raised with Christian principles. I knew that, as a district attorney, he always did the right thing. I knew he was the best at his job and that everyone in his office respected him.
But, because he stole that money from his office, he had subjected his friends to questioning and searching by the police. The story was in the paper, and I'm sure that parents of kids I went to school with knew what he had done. His job let him quit instead of firing him. I was so ashamed.
Everything I knew, or that I had known about my father was crumbling down around me. Don't get me wrong; at 12 years old, I still loved my father a great deal, and even though the pedestal was cracked, it was still standing. Even today, I know that what he did is the reason for our financial troubles now, and I knew it then too. But my father was still Superman.
At around 17, the pedestal fell. I remember this night much better than the first. I was about to beg my father to bring me somewhere in the morning, I don't remember where. I walked into the study, and he was sitting at the computer. He minimized the window once he saw me, but it was too late. I tried to recover from what I had seen and to continue talking. I felt like my head was spinning, I know I didn't even ask him what I had intended to. I just blurted something out and continued through the cluttered study, up the stairs, and into my large and unfriendly room. I collapsed on my bed and started to sob.
I don't know how much you know about christianity, but in the New Testament, Jesus says that merely thinking about doing something is just as bad as actually doing it. If you think lustfully about a woman who is not your wife, you have already committed adultery. The view I had of my father's love for my mother, the relationship that created stability in my life, had fallen apart. In my mind, my dad had cheated on my mom, and she had biblical grounds for a divorce.
My mom was asleep in the next room. I got a hold of myself, gathered up every ounce of courage I could find, and walked purposefully into my mother's room. I knew I had to tell her what I had seen. I gently woke her, tears still streaming down my face.
"Mom? Mom... wake up, Mom."
"Courtney... Courtney, what's wrong?"
"Mom, I... I just went into the study to ask Dad a question. He was on the computer, and I... I caught him looking at porn."
At these words, all the grogginess left my mother's face, yet she still looked tired, only in a different way. She immediately got out of bed.
"I told him he needed to stop that. I can't believe he would do this at home, where his children are. What did he say to you when you saw?"
For the second time on this night, I felt like I was in the twilight zone, and my mind grasped for words to respond to my mother. She knew?
"I... He doesn't know I saw. He thinks he minimized the window fast enough."
Without a word, she marched down the stairs and into the study. I say slowly on my bed, thinking. What was going on? Was I dreaming? My father was looking at pornography, and my mother knew about it? This couldn't be happening; it had to be a misunderstanding. But then why was my mother not shocked?
When she came back upstairs, she started to tell me that my father had had a problem with pornography for as long as she'd known him. She told me that he was not supposed to be doing it at home. Mom apologized that I'd seen him, and that's all I remember about out conversation. She left me there with the promise that my father loved me very much.
I can't remember how long I cried. I just know that I sobbed, the tears rolled without stopping, and I cried myself to sleep. Over the next few weeks, I had taken measure to reconcile with my father. We had a talk, and all the while, my face remained firm. I was like a statue, no longer yielding to my stupid emotions, no more tears leaking my from eyes at the expense of this man. I stood stony-faced before him while he almost cried, and I felt like he deserved to cry. Not me. Superman, huh? Yeah, right.
As the years passed, I knew that I had never stopped loving my father. Whenever, I left home after a few days' visit to return to San Jose, I told him I loved him and gave him a hug and a kiss. I still loved him dearly, but I knew things would never be the same.
One night, while I was home with my family, we were all earing dinner together. My uncle on my dad's side and his girlfriend ate with us. I don't remember how the subject up, but Uncle John started asking my dad about a time when Dad was a teenager and he had captured a criminal. It seemed like all the other conversations stopped, and everyone tuned in to this one.
"You beat him with a gun, right Russ?"
"No, well, I mean, there was a gun, but I didn't-"
"Well, I thought you hit him with a bag of change," my mom piped in.
"No, I thought you pistol-whipped him!"
At this point, even though I had no idea what they were talking about, I decided to jokingly chime in.
"No Dad, I thought you had a bazooka and blasted the whole store!"
"Dad, I thought you dropped in from a helicopter with a machine gun!" teased my brother.
"I heard you were dressed like a ninja, and you had a katana and everything!"
"I heard Jack Bauer was there!"
"Yeah, well... he was taking notes," laughed my father, thoroughly enjoying our dramatizations of his story.
My father told us what really happened. As a teenager, he worked at a gas station, and on this particular night, he was working with another girl, Rita. Dad was taking out the trash, and he had locked the door behind him. As he threw the bag into the dumpster, a man came out from the shadows, dressed like a bandit from a western. He had a gun, and he held it to my father's face as he told him to get on his knees. He told my father to hand over his wallet and keys, and then made Dad take him to the door of the gas station. Finding the door was locked, the man threatened to shoot Rita if my dad didn't open the door. He opened it. The man instructed my dad and Rita to give him all the money int he store. As Rita handed over the bags of change, my dad jumped at his change. He took a huge swing at the man, hitting him right in the face. The man stumbled backward and fired his gun; the bullet went through my dad's sleeve. They started fighting, and my dad got the gun away from him and started beating him with it. The man pulled out a knife, and my father wrestled it away from him and threw it across the store.
The fight continued until the police arrived. The man was unconscious; he was taken to the hospital and wasn't released for two months. He was tried and received prison time. My dad got little more than a few bruises and a ruined jacket as a reward.
"I'll tell ya somethin'. When he had that gun pointed at me, it was touchin' my nose. I mean, right in my face. And I knew I was die. Not a doubt in my mind. I mean, I knew he was gonna kill me 'n Rita, i just knew it. And I thought, 'Well, if this guy's gonna kill me no matter what, I'm gonna try to get out of this.'"
I sat listening, enraptured, enthralled, totally immersed in my dad's story. He told us how, int he following weeks, police officers dropped by to offer their admiration. One of them even brought him an application and told him they were having tryouts for the police department, and that he would give my father a recommendation. I couldn't believe my ears. My father, who was hardworking and firm, who gave his life to his family, who had betrayed my trust and love, really was Superman! What kind of person can dodge bullets and wrestle away knives and emerge from the fight so triumphant? It felt like all the things that had happened between my father and I had never transpired. Not what I was dwelling on them constantly, or still struggling with them, but this new discovery of my father pushed it all aside.
Later that night, my dad came into the living room where I was sitting watching TV by myself. Before he even sat down, he said, "Court, I hope I didn't upset you tonight with that story."
"Upset me? Why would I be upset? It was freakin' awesome!"
My dad didn't smile. Maybe he did, but it was such a small one, I didn't see it. He too looked tired, the kind of tired my mom had looked on that night a few years before.
"Well, it was a long time ago."
And that was that. I thought long and hard about this short exchange of words. My mom said that possibly he had responded that was because, even though he saved his own life and Rita's and prevented the robbery of that story, beating that man was something he wished he hadn't had to do.
Superman was far from perfect. He had that one great weakness: kryptonite. If kryptonite was around, Superman was done for, he was worthless. But kryptonite wasn't awlays around, so Superman had it easy. Mosy people, they carry their weaknesses, their temptations with them every second of their life. What makes us a great person is whether we can overcome our weaknesses, and whether we can continue to triumph even though they are always present. I see now that ocmparing my father to Superman is fair in some ways, but completely unfair in others. Like Superman dedicated his life to the people of Metropolis, my father dedicated his life to our family. He worked so hard to provide for us, and even though my siblings and I have all screwed up at one time or another, his love is unconditional. But the comparison is also unfair because my dad is a different hero: one that carries on in spite of his weaknesses and their constant presence, and can overcome them even though they never go away, because he really is a great person.
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