2011 Student Writing Awards Booklet - Santa Fe Community College

Personal Essay Runner-Up
Audrey Powers
A Montage of Kindness
In a “Monk Without a Robe,” by Mike McIntyre, the main character
had a mid-life crisis at the age of 37.This man had a good job, marriage,
etc., and “lost it,”Then he went on a spiritual journey. McIntyre
writes,“Kindness is strange, but never long a stranger.”What he was about
to find was kindness from people he’d least expect it from. For example, he
crossed paths with a woman/man logger (he-she), named Diana, the truck
driver who offered McIntyre a ride and a McDonald’s cheeseburger, and
Linda, a single-mom, with kids that offered him a place to stay. Reading
this essay helped me reflect on my own past experiences, of being caught
up in the foster care system, going in and of hospitals and institutions,
group homes, being homeless, and living in and out of street shelters. It is
easy to focus on the negative experiences and harder to remember the
kinder moments. Even though I didn’t have the ice-cream sundae with a
cherry on top lifestyle like McIntrye, I was able to find kindness from people
I least expected, especially people whom I assumed wouldn’t be kind
based on my own preconceived ideas.
Some of those preconceived ideas I picked up or assumed from
earlier memories were that white people were superior to Alaskan-Natives
like me. I was brainwashed to believe larlurmakens (white bearded men)
spoke English better than us, and they were placed in different classes from
us. In contrast, as an Alaskan-Native, I remember feeling like we were like
those pink, ugly, squishy worms that landed on the pavement after it rained
in Anchorage, Alaska. In addition, I remember being shoved in the snow,
and being told to go home and eat our whale blubber, that we were poor,
dark little homely things, that we didn’t speak English “good” enough, that
our parents were just drunks, and that we would never make it. All these
thoughts set up an atmosphere in which I feared white people, the cop
cars, the strangers in the hospital, and the funny marked cars with the
social workers that would come to “steal me.” Inwardly, I believed that
white people were cold, impenetrable, glass walls, and that everything they
had was special, things we weren’t allowed to have. It seemed that they
made the world move, so we had to move around them and it was a rare
experience to think that they could be caring.
So then who could imagine a person or persons willing to drive
around at night to offer Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches to young prostitutes
so that they could warm up or get to safety Who could imagine a
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