Essay 2 Workshop-Rough Draft

Do you relate to one of the characters? How? Why?


The character I relate to is Sarah Vowell in the "Shooting Dad" Dialogue because my dad and I had a relationship similar to hers and her dad's.  Her dad was also similar to mine, my dad and I were opposites, or so I thought. In the end, we became best friends and although were opposites we were very similar too.

My dad rode Harleys, that was his favorite thing to do and he also liked guns, we lived in the mountains. It took us a half an hour to get to the nearest small town. When I say small I mean small, it's only about a mile drive through the town.  My dad was one of a kind, every where he went he wanted people to look at him, he was loud and funny, but mellow too.  He was really tall and big and no one ever wanted to mess with him, he was very intimidating on the outside. On the inside, he was just a big baby and a huge sweetheart. When I was little he used to not be able to stand when me or my sister were mad at him, and we would pout and he would feel bad for yelling at us and so he would bring us cake or give us something to cheer us up. He was a huge softy and everybody loved him.  You could always count on him and he helped many people.  As a dad, he was really strict and pretty much hated boys.

I hated living in the country, it was dirty and dusty, there was all different kinds of disgusting bugs and spiders everywhere. I had to bomb my room every month because I have this huge fear of spiders crawling in my bed at night. I hate bugs and spiders I am a little weird about it too, it's an unreasonable fear I have. I am a girly girl. The bus ride to school every morning was an hour and a half and I didn't want my dad to drive me on his harley because I was embarrassed, he would rev up the engine and make everyone stare at him, I still to this day don't think anything could ever embarrass him. He was not shy at all. I was a rebellious teenager and my dad wouldn't let me do anything, we both were stubborn and liked to argue so that's what we did.  I couldn't even go to the school dances my freshman year, he eased up a little over the years, but he was a very strict parent.  I couldn't stand it, I hated where I lived and I had to be there all the time, at home.

After the four hard years of high school, we had gone through so much together and I had put him through a lot.  When I turned 18 it was he retired as being my father and became my friend, everything had changed including him.   He grew up in San Francisco and had a very strict old fashioned abusive dad from Kentucky.  He had a really hard childhood and all of his brothers were in prison or drug attics.  He was the only one that was on the right path, he was in AA. He loved helping people and that's what he did, helped anyone who was trying to get sober or stay sober no matter what it took. He would drive 3 hours to help someone.  He was a 100% disabled American Veteran so he dedicated all his time to helping others.  I was so proud of him for growing so much, and our relationship grew too. He had accepted me for who I was and accepted the fact that he couldn't change me and I was going to do things on my own time.  So after he accepted that, we were able to become friends and we were like best friends. He was always like a big kid, some boys my age were friends with him and would come over and hang out with him.

He was always there for me and I will always remember my dad as a one of a kind, honest, powerful, big hearted man that would never let me down. So this is the story of my dad and I and how we were opposites and ended up becoming very close.