When I was 8 years old racism didn’t exist. Or maybe I should say, I wasn’t aware of it. At that time we lived in Marine Corps Base Housing off El Toro Road. Base Housing consisted of older homes that were small, but so was I. So everything seemed fine to me. We had food to eat, a few toys at Christmas, and I thought life was pretty good, especially since I had a lot of friends.
In our cul-de-sac, there were a bunch of kids my age. There were two Filipino brothers next door, a Hispanic family with 5 kids next to them, an Asian family with twin girls, and an African American family with a boy and a girl. I was the only “white boy” on the block, but I didn’t know I was white because to us kids, we were just kids. We always played together after school and although we would sometimes argue, or push and shove a little, we never acted superior or called each other bad names. At eight years old, we weren’t aware of our differences. But we were aware of our similarities because our parents told us we were all “Marine Corps brats”.
One day I was riding my Schwinn bicycle down a street that was really steep. I loved to go fast, but that day I got carried away and lost control flipping over the handlebars, smashing my face and arms into the asphalt. I was hurt bad, bleeding from about 10 different places and crying my eyes out. My friend Anthony saw the whole thing and came racing to my aid. He helped me up and then walked my bike back home with me, trying to cheer me up despite my non-stop tears. When I got near our garage, my Dad saw me and Anthony approaching and came running. The look of shock on his face when he saw my blood-soaked clothes, scared the crap out of me and made me start crying even worse. But I remember Anthony putting his arm around me and telling me that I was home now, and everything was gonna be okay. Anthony always had the biggest smile and the whitest teeth on the block and for some reason, his big bright smile always made me feel better.
Later that evening, when we sat down for dinner, my Dad said something funny. He said, “Joey, I think it’s good that you have a friend like Anthony, especially since he’s black.” I didn’t get what my Dad meant, so I asked him why he called Anthony “black”. That evening my Dad explained racism to me and how people are often treated differently because of the color of their skin. He told me it was wrong to judge people in the first place, and really wrong to judge people because of the color of their skin. I thought about it for a minute, and then asked my Dad a question, “Is it okay to judge kids by how they act? Cause I really like the ones that are nice to me!” This was a long time ago, but I remember my Dad being really quiet for a moment and then saying something like, “Kind of hard not to.”
Love this one
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