Amy Dillon
English 484- Writing Workshop Topics- The Short Story Cycle
Dan Stolar
4/16/19
Emulation #1
College Applications
My Dad gave me my first Northeastern baseball cap when I was two years old. It is bright blue with gold lettering that reads “NEIU.” It has gotten dirty throughout the years, from wearing it to softball games and spending summer nights with my dad playing catch at Oriole Park.
“It’s never too early to think about your future,” he would say, swinging his left arm back and throwing the beat-up tennis ball at me with moderate speed. It was one of the balls that Kiki, our Australian Shepheard, would fetch when my Dad threw it all the way from one end of the yard to another, from our maroon-and-blue painted porch, all the way back to the carpet of trees, where sometimes in the morning we saw mother and baby dear graze the tall grass.
“I’m only ten years old,” I would say, shielding the sunlight from my eyes after a plane finished passing over. I guess my baseball cap should have helped, but I was wearing it backwards: an act my Dad would disapprove of but not forbid.
“Doesn’t matter,” he would say, “If you want to succeed in life, you need to know what you want.”
I would roll my eyes and laugh at the same time. I guess I wasn’t old enough to know that my Dad was trying to be serious. He was the type of father that wanted the best for me but would never push things just to be his way. Years later, he knew that I wanted to be a teacher, even though he wanted me to be a journalist for the Chicago Sun Times. He works there as the editor-in-chief, and he told me he would hire me, if I wanted, once I graduated from Northeastern Illinois University. Sometimes, when he mentioned it, the word wanted was always stressed, so that it sounded like he was saying that I needed to work there. I often think of the offer, but every time I do, I always come to the same conclusion, that I need to do what I want to do to be happy, and that was to be a high school history teacher.
Teaching, however, was way ahead of me. I was just done with the first quarter of my senior year at Smithson Academy in the northwest suburbs. I was in the midst of applying for colleges, hoping for at least a partial tuition waiver. I was applying to Northeastern University, Northwestern University, Loyola University, and DePaul University. They were all places close to home, though I still wanted the full dormitory and on-campus living experience. Northwestern was where my sister got her degree in education, and she went on to be a Chicago public school junior high teacher. I wanted to follow in her footsteps, but at the same time, I didn’t just want to fall in her shadow, to only be the next Johnson in line to pursue education.
The most nerve-racking part about applying for college and scholarships was writing application essays. Some prompts revolved around the student’s background, or accomplishments. One of Northeastern’s prompts was to describe the student’s idol and to explain what he or she did to be idolized. For the past seven and a third days I had been debating back and forth in my mind who to write about, and it always came down to my mother and dad. I call my mother my mother and not my mom because there is a little bit of distance between us, as opposed to my dad and I. When I ask my mother a question, she always says something accommodating, adequate, and serious. When I ask my dad a question, he’ll tell me something to make me feel better, or make a joke of the situation. I was more impressed, though, by my mother’s accomplishments, because she was a published writer that had a book on the New York Time’s best seller list. Her book, “Summer Greens,” was two-hundred and five pages long, and my Aunt Gabby “absolutely loved it,” as also said all of my mom’s “friends,” or in other terms, cohorts, following her around repeating “Future Pulitzer Prize Winner.”
Whenever I have a problem, I always plan out my plan of attack thoroughly. I guess you could say I am a problem solver. I had four essays to write in the next couple weeks and all I had done so far was scribble wavy lines and sketch flowers in the corner of a notepad. On a Monday night I told myself that I needed to get down to business and at least write one. I had the main points written out and had turned on my laptop just a few seconds before I heard the yelling.
“I already told them we could watch Jackie for the week while they are at Karla’s softball tournament,” I heard my Dad yell. The slamming of the refrigerator vibrated from the kitchen, through the hall, down the basement stairs, and through my bedroom door.
“I know, Albert, but whenever we babysit for your sister’s dog, the sofa is stained with pee, the carpet smells like feces, and we are up half the night hearing her pacing and stampeding throughout the halls.” I could hear her slam down her coffee cup onto the counter. Whenever they had fights, I sat on the basement stairs and listened. I have never experienced anything worse than yelling, but when they raised their voices, it made me nervous. It was about eight o’clock when I took my seat on the orange juice stain, on the third stair from the brown carpet. I put my feet on the second to last stair, wrapped my arms around my knees, and dug my chin into my arm. I listened to the first five or so minutes of it, but after that I zoned out, staring at the Simpson’s poster that was plastered on the wall ahead of me. Whenever I listened to a fight, I stared at the poster, at one specific detail of the drawing of the family of four and a dog. Tonight, I noticed Homer’s three strands of hair, and I thought to myself, if he were a real person, he would have more hair than that- even if he was balding. I thought to myself what he must think when he looked in the (cartoon) mirror in the morning to comb over those three strands. I thought to myself, if I were Homer, would I rather be a cartoon with just three strands of hair, without the problem of being unattractive, or would I rather be a man in the real word, with a family that loves him and a dog named “Santa’s Helper,” that yet, only had three strands of hair.
This was the stuff that I thought to myself when I didn’t want to face the reality that my parents hated each other. They had been together for a long time, twenty years, but they had just started fighting a few years ago. They usually fight once or twice every few weeks. The first time I heard yelling it scared me and I ran up the stairs to see what was going on. I climbed up every other step, and swung open the heavy yellow wooden door that led into the kitchen. My parents were in front of me, standing on the sea of a tile kitchen floor, my Dad on one side of the counter, my mother, the other. My mother’s face was red and her eyes were puffy from tears. My dad swung around to see me and then ran his hand over his brown hair.
“Go back to bed, Izzie,” my mother said, a look of angst meeting sympathy on her face. My dad’s eyes were big and his mouth formed a frown. I felt helpless, like it was up to me to do something. As soon as I had walked in, however, the world stopped. I had walked into a parallel universe, one where two opposites could happen in a matter of seconds. I felt like a puppy, like I couldn’t do anything but look up helplessly and bark.
In a matter of minutes, the yelling stopped, and I decided to go upstairs to see if everything was okay. I slowly opened the door and crossed over the wood barrier between the basement and the kitchen. My mother wasn’t there and my dad standing by the counter, one elbow on the marble, one hand holding up his forehead.
He showed an expression that established that he had stopped thinking about whatever he was thinking before I walked in, as he looked up and clasped his two hands together. “Can I help you, Izzy?”
I paused for a second, and put my notepad in front of him, next to the kitchen sink. “Yeah, this is the thesis of my Northeastern application essay.” I said. “What do you think?”
He took my notepad from me, and lightheartedly grimaced. His eyes scanned over the yellow notepad, one that had been adorned with stuff I drew out of boredom in second period study hall.
“I think if you are trying to prove to Northeastern that you would be a good cartoonist, you certainly are getting somewhere,” he said.
“No really, dad, do you think it’s good?” I asked.
“You hardly knew Grandma. If you want to write about an idol, it should be about someone you know well, someone that knows you well.”
“Can I write about you?” I asked.
“I think,” he said, sliding the notepad back to me over the marble counter, “that would be a great idea.”
“But what should I write about you?” I asked.
“Whatever you want,” he said. “Write how I want what is best for you, for you and your future. Write how I have your past. Write that you want to got to Northeastern to be like me.”
I smiled, took my notepad back, and opened the door to the basement.
“Thanks, Dad,” I said. I strolled down the steps and into my room, taking the seat by my desk. The screensaver on my computer was a picture of my dad and I at the park. We are standing under my favorite maple tree, and his arm is around my shoulder, our tennis ball in my hand.
I took my blue pen and wrote out an outline of my essay. I furiously wrote a rough draft, my head down to the table, my cheek almost touching the paper.
When I was done, the opening line read, “I want to be like my dad, because he makes me happy.”
I chose to emulate the point of view of George Willard in the story Mother in the book Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson. In the chapter, George Willard’s parents, Tom and Elizabeth, are portrayed as people who don’t get along, and also Tom Willard wants the best for George’s future, and he gives him a job at the local newspaper office. I emulated the conflict between the two parents, as well as the theme of the future of George Willard’s character.