As a child, I found myself obsessing over comic books and superheroes, and learning all of their abilities and secret identities. It was an endless fruitful world filled with scenic skylines, villainy beyond compare, and a hero ready to spring into action at a moments notice. I specifically had become infatuated with one red, white, and blue hero though: Captain America. Since I could remember, everything about Captain America appealed to my boyish senses. He was humble, courageous, strong-willed, and pure of heart. Even when he had performed heroics previously unseen, and the droves of innocents he saved would call him a hero, he would just shrug it off and say: "I'm just a kid from Brooklyn." Steve Rogers was everything I wanted to be and more. I wasn't just a scrawny kid from Brooklyn though, who joined the army and got selected for a super soldier program and gained two feet of height and about a hundred pounds of extra muscle. I was just a scrawny kid from St. Petersburg, FL, and it pretty much ended there. But with every movie and comic that further developed Captain America, it inspired me to display the courage and leadership that he did, and be just as every bit of amazing as him. In the piece I Once Was Miss America, Roxanne Gay writes of not often fitting in at middle and high school because of her ethnicity, and how she would use the book series Sweet Valley High to transcend her daily life. Her writing was passionate and powerful, and as I read, I too was nostalgically brought back to when I would wait for my brother to buy me the latest edition of the Captain America comics. I also realized as I read, that while I can empathize with Gay as much as I'd like to think I can, I would never truly understand her struggle to the fullest extent. I am not Haitian, I'm not a woman, and I never was picked on to the extent that her abusers brought onto her. I'm a white male and have never had the experience of being confronted because of my race, and I've certainly never had to worry about fitting in with popular girls. Her story was touching, and I can only apologize for trying to empathize with her. Gay's description of nostalgia was far reaching and accurate. Nostalgia breaks down the barriers between gender, race, background, etc., and instead fills all with comfort. No matter the person, we all have a memory that drips warmth through our veins and soothes our mind. The most inspiring part of Gay's writing for me, was that even through the torment from other kids and the visage of the Wakefield twins constantly flooding her thoughts, she did not make an attempt to modify her being. She was strong, like a boulder of the finest marble, far more comfortable with keeping its jagged edges than letting sculptors mold her into something else than her purest form. I admire Roxanne Gay for her flourishing success in life, after all that she had previously experienced. And even though she may never win Miss America, I believe that now she can proudly say to her former classmates: "It's pretty damn close." Of course, unfortunately I know I will never amount to the sheer magnitude of Steve Rogers. I can only hope that one day I'll be able to look at my poster of Captain America on my wall and say: "Man, I'm pretty damn close."
Until next reading.
- JDS