Kemp Powers - Where'd That Apple Go? 

 

I'm standing alone on a subway platform in the Carroll Garden section of Brooklyn. It's 1986 and I'm alone because I've just missed the doors closing on this particular F train. Now, by the time I realize my mistake, it's too late. The train starts moving and my eyes are trying to track the passing windows on the subway cars and I catch little glimpses of groups of kids who are riding in the empty spaces in between those cars. I suddenly hear this loud crack and turn around and look behind me and I see the D cell battery that just missed my head rolling to a stop. You see, the kids who are riding on the train are actually chucking batteries at the people standing on the platform. And by people, I mean me. [audience chuckle] So I cover my face, I duck low and I run as fast as I can for the exit, occasionally hearing more cracks as batteries zip by and ricochet behind me until eventually the train speeds out of the station. 

 

On this day, none of them got me, and I'm relieved. But there's always going to be other days. It's amazing the things that we can train ourselves to become accustomed to. And growing up in what you have to describe as the battlefields of Brooklyn in the 1980s, I became accustomed to a lot. The sight of blood when it pours out of a gaping wound, the peculiar scent of cheap paint when it burns from one too many house fires. Some people say that enduring these experiences gives us character. And if that's the case, then by the time I was an adult, I was overflowing with character. 

 

When my son was born, I remember holding him in my arms and thinking if through genetic osmosis we pass certain traits onto our children, then this boy was going to be ready for anything. But my son ended up surprising me in very different, unexpected ways. And I often found myself asking, just “Why is my son such a little bitch all the time?” [audience laughter] The whining, the quick descents into tears, these things were the fuel that fed the ass kicking’s the city streets delivered on a daily basis. 

 

And my son is like that kid who didn't have the common sense not to let his mother drop him off right in front of school because he was afraid to take the subway. It's like that kid was almost asking for the rotten egg that was going to be thrown at his head later on in the day. And I have to admit, my son and I would not have been friends as children. [audience laughter] When he was younger, I found his soft but inquisitive nature really entertaining. When his preschool held their first mock presidential elections, my son was the only person who abstained from voting. [audience laughter] He said that he didn't want to ruffle any feathers. And I can't count how many times he's been on the losing end of some of the absolute worst schoolyard trades in all of West Los Angeles, where we live right now. Like the time that he traded away a brand-new gigantic Transformers robot for this torn up, worthless comic book. 

 

So, at first, I blame California and its progressive learning. [audience laughter] Starting in preschool, it seems like there's no such thing as conflict resolution, because no one seems willing to acknowledge that kids are actually in conflict. Every child is required to call every other child my friend all the time. And “What do we do when my friend gouges me in the face?” The teacher asks. And I say, “Kick his ass,” but see, I can't say that out loud because that would make me a bad parent. The answer to the question is, “We asked my friend what I did that made him so angry,” and if that's not opening the door to a repeat offense. [audience laughter] I just don't know what is. 

 

The only lessons I learned when I was a kid are in perseverance. You either silently endure, you break, or you fight back. And in reality, the only answer is to fight back. And my son never fights back. When someone takes something from him, he just cries himself into a puddle. And honestly, I was starting to worry if I was failing in my duties as a father, if I wasn't preparing him adequately for this harsh world, if he was just going to be plowed over. And it sure wasn't helping toughen him up that he spent his summers in camps that didn't do anything but arts and crafts and trips to Disneyland. 

 

My summers were spent either sweltering in our apartment or, if I was really unlucky, on vacation down in North Carolina, where I spent my days fighting with the local hillbillies. [audience chuckle] My nights trying to build up the courage to go to the bathroom in an outhouse and having all of my snack foods rationed by my aunt. One chore completed got me one Cheez it Doodle. [audience laughter] And these weren't your typical chores. Making your bed is a requirement, not a chore. A chore would be like going out to a dark shed at night and having to clean off all the webs, scorpions and critters from a dilapidated old tractor. Or having to pick your body weight in corn or tomatoes. [audience laughter] And that's a lot of work for a damn Cheez Doodle, [audience laughter] but I did it. And it's a work my son has never had to do. His only chores are to clean his room and to spritz his pet frog. [audience laughter] And [giggles] I have no doubt that if I didn't actually miss the frog for him, that thing would die like within a week. And if I took away all his snack foods, he'd probably fall into such a depression that no one on a Paxil would pull him out of it. It’s, I’m sorry—[chuckles] 

Yeah, so I blamed his white mother [laughter and applause] because after all, how could I explain my little caramel colored Woody Allen's seeming hypersensitivity to the entire world around him? I mean, there was no rabid, mangy animal that he didn't want to take home. And there was no deranged homeless person that we walked by that he couldn't engage in a heavy, involved conversation. I mean, when I was his age, I was completely oblivious to the kids outside world. You see, being New Yorkers, were perpetual renters that meant we moved around a lot. In theory, it's easy, but the reality is, being a single mom with four kids, moving is anything but easy. But my mom had a hard rule that she lived. When the drama reaches your front door, it's time to go. And sadly, the drama reached our front door a lot. 

 

See, I had three much older sisters, but they were all about a year to a year and a half apart in age. This meant they all got to go to the same school at the same time. Now, having two relatives in one school could be called a family, but I think when you have three in one school, you have to call that a gang. This meant most trips outside of our cramped apartment either began or ended in fights with other neighborhood girls. And these fights got so common that it got to the point where they would actually ring our doorbell. And when my mother answered, they'd say politely, “Hello, Ms. Powers, is it okay if your daughter comes out to fight?” [audience laughter] But don't let the politeness fool you. I mean, these fights got really, really bad. 

 

I remember one time my father brought my sister Stephanie home early from school. She'd been suspended for a week because she'd slashed up another girl's face with a razor blade. And don't act surprised, that was common back then because a girl could carry a razor comfortably all day in her mouth, in the space between her cheek and her tongue. 

 

My son couldn't carry a razor in his mouth on his best day, as a matter of fact, he's already achieved what I call the mythical twofer. He's cut himself with safety scissors. [audience laughter] And he's managed to split open his eyebrow on a rounded edge free table [audience laughter]. And even if he could, I doubt he could handle the fallout from these Pyrrhic victories. Case in point, back when I was his age, I remember one morning, it was a Saturday morning, I was sitting in the living room watching my cartoons and eating a bowl of Apple Jacks. Someone, most likely the boyfriend of one of my sisters, too many enemies to count, flung a Molotov cocktail at our front door and it almost burned the whole building down. I remember the adults running around frantically and panicking as the smoke crept under the door, but I didn't move, I just sat there, kept eating my Apple Jacks and watched my cartoons. The fire department arrived, they doused the flames, and I hadn't moved. I remember actually being surprised the next morning when I left the apartment and the entire hall was completely black from the intense heat, which was covered in soot. All except one spot right by our front door where someone had actually written into the soot, “We know where you live, Ms. Powers. It's time to go.” 

 

Years later, I'm sitting at my kitchen table with my son, and he's eating his favorite cereal, Honey Nut Cheerios. Only he hasn't finished the bowl. Instead, he's been collecting Band-Aids and he's gathering them into this big pile in the center of the table. I tell him it's just a field trip, and then nothing's going to happen to him [audience laughter] that requires this amount of medical supplies. [audience laughter] And he looks at me, puzzled. He says, “They're not for me, Dad. I need all this because if something happens to one of my friends, I need to be able to take care of them.” If something happens to one of my friends, I need to be able to take care of them. And it's at that point that I realized the error of my character assessment. You see, my son was a sweet boy. But after how I'd grown up, I couldn't process his sweetness as anything other than weakness. In scorning him for his obvious inability to flourish in the world that I knew, I totally miss the point that he was being guided through a world in which compassion and love were all around him as opposed to being lost on the edge of a fist, on the tip of a baseball bat or down the barrel of a gun. 

 

See, I hope that in my life my son never knows what it's like to have his shoes stolen from off of his feet. I hope that he's never subjected to the humiliating ritual of having to go out to a tree and select the branch with which he's going to beaten. I don't want him to know the scent of gunfire and I don't want him to know the awful sound of someone dying in your arms. These are things I know. I still think my son and I wouldn't have been friends as children. I mean, how could we man? He couldn't have saved me. He couldn't have helped me strike out at those who hurt me. But I draw new comfort in knowing that our not having been friends wouldn't have been because of his inability to outsmart the vicious world we called home, but from my jealousy at his not having needed to. So, I help him gather all his Band-Aids up into his bag. And even though I know he's going to get grief for it from the other boys, on this day, I let him take his favorite stuffed animal to school too. [audience chuckle] Because what my son's known all along, and what I'm sadly just now learning, is that being kind and decent is nothing to be ashamed of. Thank you.